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Letter to the editor

Columns

Don't count on influx of boomers

By JAMES THORNER, (Un)Real Estate
Published January 11, 2008

Has any group been more analyzed than the baby boomer generation, that demographic bulge moving through our body politic like a bunny through a boa constrictor?

As if those 76-million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 didn't get enough attention, they're now being asked to do the seemingly impossible: restore Florida real estate to its glory.

You couldn't button-hole a Realtor last year without getting an earful about the baby boomer as Housing Industry Messiah. The assumption is that creaking joints and Florida warmth go together like bacon and eggs. All those boomers entering their 60s will abandon Icy Forge, N.Y., for Florida's year-round golf.

The first boomers turn 62 this year. Over the next 18 years, an average of 4-million boomers a year will reach that magic age.

Housing analyst Tony Polito pushed the boomer theme at a lunch by Tampa Bay Builders Association this week. Polito argues that as boomers retire, about 20 percent plan to change homes. That's 800,000 people thrust annually onto the market. Twenty percent of that group could retire to Florida. By that logic, 160,000 people will arrive each year.

If true, that's good news for the Florida housing industry. Forbes magazine has dubbed Tampa the No. 1 place in the nation to retire. But forgive me some skepticism. These surveys assume retirees' tastes are cryogenically frozen. Who says the retiree of 2015 will mimic the Detroit autoworker retirees who settled in Pinellas County in the 1990s?

A MetLife survey confirmed that about a quarter of boomers plan to move. Dig deeper and you learn most respondents said they'd move within their own state - not surprising when you realize that millions migrated to the Sun Belt during their working years.

Twenty percent of migrating retirees did choose Florida in 2000. By last year, it was down to about 13 percent. Maybe higher taxes turned people off. Maybe it's the hurricanes.

But there's nothing more dangerous than predicting the changing tastes of America's Second Greatest Generation.

[Last modified January 10, 2008, 22:45:55]