Younger Buyers Purchasing Retirement Homes

Buying Trends

Retirement-home sales are growing...among buyers still decades away from retiring. From New York's Catskill Mountains to Oregon's rocky coast, younger couples who might otherwise be focused on building a nest egg instead are buying a lakefront house or country cabin that they hope to one day use in retirement.
For these younger buyers, this isn't an extension of the real estate investment bug that bit a few years ago and is now fading as home prices flag in many markets. And they're not throwing financial caution to the wind just because they want a second home. Instead, they're crunching the numbers and making hard decisions about their personal finances. In some cases, they're receiving an inheritance or a stock grant and are choosing to invest in their future real estate needs rather than the stock market. In other cases, they're altering their expectations about how long they'll work and the kind of returns they'll earn on their nest egg in order to pursue an emotional investment.
No one knows how many younger buyers are out snapping up their retirement homes. But real estate agents and financial planners around the country say they're increasingly assisting younger buyers spending $100,000 to $500,000 for a house to call home in retirement. Partially at play is a cultural shift planners say they see among younger savers who aren't content to just accumulate assets to use in retirement. Instead, this younger generation wants to put some of its nest egg to work today as an investment in family. (Jeff Opdyke, The Wall Street Journal Online)