Cheap retirees lead housing recovery

As you waive goodbye to your snowbird friends, hope and pray that more of them will come next year — even if they don't plan to spend that much.

That's because the demand for homes in Lee and Collier counties subdivisions was weak this winter, the traditional home-buying peak on the Gulf Coast.

“The move-ins are still dismal,” says Bradley Hunter, national director of consulting for Metrostudy. The firm tracks housing starts and move-ins in residential communities.

Although builders have sharply cut back the supply of new homes by building few in recent years, the challenge continues to be lack of demand, Hunter told a recent gathering of executives at the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce.

“Foreclosures extend the problem into the future,” Hunter says.

But the keys to a recovery will be in the hands of retirees who still have equity in their homes in northern states and will eventually sell at current lower prices so they can move to Florida. Though no one can pinpoint with certainty when that will happen, “retiree demand will be the first segment to come back,” Hunter predicts.

When they do come back, retirees will look for smaller, less expensive homes without all the fancy extras such as stainless-steel appliances.

In anticipation, developers and builders are busy “value engineering,” Hunter says. “Retiree flow is going to come back strong.”