Numbers
don't lie, but the data about the housing market can be confusing. What does it mean, for example, that
housing starts improved month to month?
Are we seeing more new homes because of buyer demand or because builders
are trying to keep their employees working before they leave for a more
predictable industry (like hamburger flipping, perhaps)? Do any of us really care about home
sales volume if prices are not recovering?
Foreclosure
issues still hang over the housing market (and over the recession, which ended
Hanging on to a house with taxes of $16,000 to get a few extra dollarsin sale price before you move to that home in NC with $2,000 in taxes may be a fool's economy.
this week, according to Fed Chairman Bernanke), but their impact on the market
of concern to us here -- vacation and retirement homes on golf courses -- is
dubious. There are generally two
housing markets developing in America -- the one that needs an $8,000 stimulus
to buy a house, and the market in which enough wealth has been built over the
length of careers that moving from one $500,000 home to another (in a warmer climate)
is a realistic dream.
According
to my inbox and telephone, those in this latter group are coming off the
sidelines. I never thought of this
humble blog site as a leading indicator, just a place for honest information
about golf real estate where I throw a few ideas and honest reviews of golf
communities out there and if someone connects to what I've written, they might
send me an occasional question or comment.
Over the last few years, those have
not exactly flooded in, or even petered in...until now. In the last few weeks, no more than a few days have gone by
without some contact from a couple asking for ideas about their next stop in
the housing market. They are
generally within a couple of years of age 60; retired or a year within
retirement; typically looking for a home in a golf community in the Carolinas
and Georgia (not Florida, at this point); and ready to take whatever the market
will give them for a price on their primary homes up north (although I am
working with one Florida couple looking to move to the Carolinas).
Maybe the knowledge that winter is
just around the corner is driving most of them, but I think something stronger
is at work here. Baby boomers, who
have worked hard to reject the Depression mentality and sacrificial personalities
of their parents, may have reached the point at which they realize that
deferring their dreams while they wait for the value of their primary homes to
come back is too steep a price to pay.
Some, like the nice lady from New Jersey I spoke with yesterday, have
also figured out that waiting is a fool's economy when taxes on your primary
home are $16,000 a year and taxes on the home you have looked at in North
Carolina are just $2,000.
There are plenty of good personal
reasons for people to defer a move, such as family issues, part-time job
prospects, and other important aspects related to lifestyle. But in this market, at this time, and
with more boomers starting to begin again the migration south that was interrupted
in 2005 with the collapse of the market and many stock portfolios, waiting for
one home to increase in value before you buy another that is likely to
appreciate faster could be a costly game.
