I just finished a two day course about seniors and real estate. While obtaining the SRES (Seniors Real Estate Specialist) designation, I gained a lot of valuable information and resources to better help my senior clients. Sorry mom and dad, you get grouped in with the seniors… but I do acknowledge that most of you in the baby boomer generation do not identify with the term ‘senior.’ Really, the class helped me understand the particular real estate concerns of the 50+ age group.
Baby boomers are downsizing, upsizing, buying second homes, gathering investment properties… continuing on being the hard working and high achieving people they always were. No surprise to me!
What was most fascinating to me was learning more about the generation prior to the baby boomers, often called the Silent Generation or the Matures.
The Matures are also hard working people, but as opposed to the baby boomers they are risk averse. This generation has likely owned their homes for a very long time, not spent pennies where it was not needed and in general are cautious about financial decisions. Many in this group are selling a family home to downsize or move to a retirement community. Along with this decision comes the task of organizing and ‘downsizing’ stuff, memories gathered for many years. It is an emotional time and not particularly fun for most.
The next time a friend calls me to ask if I can help with the sale of her grandparents’ home, I will be armed with many more resources to serve this amazing group of people, and I am very much looking forward to the stories I will hear and life lessons I will learn along the way.