Boomers to Drive Second-Home Market

The baby boom generation won't own second homes at a higher rate than their predecessors, but the cohort will own more vacation properties simply because of its sheer size, according to research released at the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention in Chicago."Baby boomers are not acting differently from their parents," said Doug Duncan, the MBA's chief economist. "However, the baby boom cohort is so large that even if they follow typical buying patterns, they will have significant impacts on many local housing markets." Sponsored jointly by the Research Institute for Housing in America and Radian, the private mortgage insurer, the study also found that senior suburbanites are just as likely to move to nonmetropolitan areas as to the city. The RIHA study is the second released this month having to do with baby boomers. The other, by the National Association of Realtors, found that boomers own other kinds of real estate in addition to a primary residence: 13% own land; 8% rental property; 7% a vacation home or seasonally occupied property; 2% commercial real estate; and 3% some other kind of real estate. The NAR also found that boomers are proportionately more active in the second-home market, owning 57% of all vacation/seasonal homes. The RIHA study found that 6.6 million homeowners age 50 or older already own second homes, but only a small percentage have mortgages. The MBA can be found online at http://www.mortgagebankers.org.