Entries Tagged 'Senior Housing' ↓

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This makes my blood boil. New York overall has such ridiculous property taxes to pay for the bloat of civil service and government payrolls and services. Now that they have squeezed all of the blood out of the stone that the senior population in these cities can afford, they are looking to have them work for low wages to pay off the debts.  

Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check each month and worries about the sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76, raised her family there and after 43 years, she really doesn’t want to leave Greenburgh.
Greenburgh doesn’t want her to leave, either.
The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.
“People shouldn’t have to sell their house, move away to a place with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends,” said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.

… The proposal has caused a stir in Greenburgh, a town of 90,000 in Westchester County, which has the nation’s third-highest homeowner property taxes. The plan would be unusual if not unique in New York, but similar programs are considered successes in Colorado, Massachusetts, South Carolina and elsewhere.

Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes - perhaps $2,000 to the town - and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills. via My Way News

Think about it, you have a senior paying 12,000 dollars on her home. Now if it is a mansion that is one thing but I sincerely doubt it. It is easier to turn them into indentured servants to pay off the debt created by an out of control bureaucracy.

My mother in law is in the same boat. She lives in a nice condo in upstate New York. She could sell it today for about $150,000 dollars. Her taxes are $9,000 dollars in a region of the country that is not doing so great. The pressure to pay these taxes every year are a sore point in her life.

The problem that these governments are going to have to face is that people will vote with their feet to stop paying these taxes. Where I live a $150,000 dollar home will pay about $2,000 in taxes and that is before the senior exemptions. Think of that, the regional governments in New York have to collect $7,000 more to supply the services in New York than Georgia.

Tell me we could not get rid of a lot of waste very quickly if people really cared to up there. Instead, making seniors work to pay off the debt is a better solution to these blood suckers.

Last one out turn off the lights.

First, if you are looking to find a powerful group of buyers in the market, the gay and lesbian market is growing quickly. According to Trend Watching, a newsletter that focuses on the newest marketing trends, the gay and lesbian purchasing power should exceed 835 billion dollars in 2011. Now that is not all housing, but a part of it will be an it is a demographic that should not be ignored.

Trend Watching had an interesting segment of the marketplace that did catch my eye as working a micro niche of the market. Retirement communities for the gay and lesbian community. The first real “out” gays were coming of age in the sixties. These folks are now hitting the retirement years and are looking to retire as they lived. Trendwatching found 5 retirement communities that focus on the gays. and lesbians.

 Many gays and lesbians reject the traditional retirement community lifestyle. After years of living freely, they don’t want to move back into the closet. So make way for the following alternatives:
RainbowVision has developed gay and lesbian retirement communities in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Palm Springs, California.
Currently under development, Paradise One Condominiums is part retirement community and part upscale condominium, “a progressive community that is as Straight-Friendly as it is Gay Friendly.”
Stonewall Communities’ vision is to develop and offer a range of options for older GLBT people. Stonewall Audubon Circle, currently under development, will be open to anyone regardless of race, colour, national origin, religion, familial status, age, handicap, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
The Resort on Carefree Boulevard bills itself as Southwest Florida’s premier lesbian destination, with a mixture of full-time and holiday residents ranging in age from 40 to 85 years, both working and retired.
Despite its name, Finnish Mummolaakso (’Grandma Valley’) is a solidarity group open to women of all ages, with most members aged between 30 and 60. The organisation aims to provide healthcare and terminal care for lesbians and bisexual women, with the ultimate aim of providing retirement housing services, too.

FOREVER TRENDS

Tags: gay+retirement, lesbian+retirement

Homesellers that are targeting the active adult market, those adults that have just entered their senior years but are still going strong, are still doing well according to the the National Association of Home Builders. These markets are a little different to sell into as the buyers typically are not in a great rush like a family relocating or needing a bigger house due to a new child.

But when they come to buy money is much less of an issue. They are more willing to buy or build before selling their previous home. And cash at closing typically is not an issue. With more than 25 percent of the population of the United States over 55 this may be a market to explore in your community.

Yet the active-adult segment is not suffering as much as the new-home market as a whole, says Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of research at the National Association of Home Builders. “The current factors, especially high prices, have been affecting the first-time buyers more than anyone else, and it has gotten more difficult for them to buy because the problems with subprime loans have made lenders tighten credit standards,” Ahluwalia said.
The over-55 market is not feeling the same pressures because so-called active adults are not in a “supply market” - that is, in most cases, they are not in a hurry to buy a house. “When these buyers get into the market, they come in with higher income, deeper equity and already are living in a house that has gone up in value over the years,” he said. via San Jose Mercury News

Well, the Baby Boomers are no longer babies, in fact the human bubble of births is now turning to their retirement years. For those interested in housing and real estate, the need for quality senior housing is going to expand significantly in the coming years.

In the past, financing for senior housing was hard to get for developers, but at a recent convention for the Mortgage Bankers Association, that was the topic of the day. And money is flowing into the sector at an amazing rate.

The growing senior population represents an opportunity for commercial lenders, she said. Until recently, senior housing was viewed as a niche market best left to specialists. Today “you have the parents of the boomers, who are in their 80s, and they are among the biggest users of senior housing,” Scott said. “This is a market that is skyrocketing.”
Curt P. Schaller, director of real estate originations for Merrill Lynch Capital Healthcare Finance, said the senior housing business is changing, even though many lenders have been slow to recognize it.
“A lot of people don’t realize how big the senior sector is,” he said. “Senior housing is looked at as an ugly stepchild. It is a significant player. Valuations are through the roof. Occupancies are up.”
Angela Mago, senior vice president and national manager for KeyBank Real Estate Capita, said there is plenty of capital available for senior housing loans. New types of products are emerging, such as for-sale homes sold in tandem with assisted-living units. “You are going to see multiple levels of care.”
Mortgage bankers were urged to do their homework before loaning money for senior housing. James J. Piecznski, co-president for health care and specialty finance at CapitalSource, a commercial finance firm, said his company looks for “good quality operators.” via SignOnSanDiego.com

A new study by the firm Fidelity Investments seems to warn off homeowners from counting on home equity as a primary vehicle for their retirement. Now, I am a firm believer in spreading out ones assets between many sources planning for retirement, but this reports doom and gloom may have to be taken with a bit of salt.

Fidelity Investments is not a player in the real estate market, but a huge player in the stocks and bonds world. So while their advice may carry some water, I would not sell my home tomorrow if I was thinking solely of my retirement. Housing assets are just one plank of a successful retirement strategy.

“When we started the work, the real question was: If I have home equity, how should I think about using it in retirement,” said Guy L. Patton, executive director of the Fidelity Research Institute. “The conclusion: The returns on residential real estate are probably less than what most people think they are.”
Over the more than 40-year period, real compound returns on stocks outpaced that of residential real estate, according to the study, with 5.95% average annual returns on stocks compared with 1.35% in realty. A dollar invested in stocks in 1963 would have compounded to $12.36 by 2006, while the same dollar would have grown to $1.79 in real estate.
The median price of new homes in the United States has risen since the early 1970s, with an average annual appreciation rate of 5.9% since 1963. But there have also been sharp corrections three times during the time period. It’s one thing if the homeowner is able to “ride out” the sharp downturns; it’s another if they’re considering the home as a potential retirement asset in the near future, the report said. via MarketWatch.

Aging baby boomers in suburban markets will stagnate these markets in the coming years according to a report issued by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The reason why, when people turn 50 they tend to move less. By slowing down the velocity of the market, there will be less opportunities to buy and motivation for young families to come in.

“Baby boomers are moving into age groups where they’ll be much less mobile,” said Michael Fratantoni, a senior economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association. “With that aging-in-place phenomenon, portions of the country that are not used to having large senior populations will gray very quickly.”
According to the study, homeowners are less likely to move after they reach 50. About 27 percent of the people age 25 through 30 move in a given year. By contrast, fewer than 10 percent of those 50 and above move at all, and fewer than 5 percent move to a different state.
Those baby boomers who will move in the coming decades, Fratantoni said, are likely to be the most affluent and educated.
Those who remain, he added, will have lower incomes and less education. “So there’s likely to be a greater demand on services,” he said.
The effect will be felt most keenly between 2010 and 2030; by 2030 the whole baby boom generation will be older than 65. via the Austin Stateman

Anecdotally, when my wife and I first married, we moved into a community that was graying quickly, much along the lines of the article describes. While we loved our neighbors, they were all like favorite aunts and uncles, we craved living in a community with people our own age, issues, and concerns. When we moved to a neighborhood that had these characteristics, we were, and are, in heaven.

The additional tax burden for the younger families in communities that gray too quickly are fierce. Seniors typically consume more public resources, and as a community grays the politicians are quick to garner votes with increased senior benefits. The younger families then have to pick up the slack and pay a higher tax burden for the opportunity to live in that community.

If they move at all.

Information coming from  AARP shows that seniors tend not to move,but if they do they relocate to a smaller city that resembles the city they came from, just a more  accessible version. My parents relocated to coastal Carolina as it allowed them the same amenities of the region they left with the  access to a college town, beaches, and year round golf.

“That’s the national myth. The reality is … most people don’t move,” she said. “Community is incredibly important to our older citizens. They feel connected to their community.”
A quieter part of a major metropolitan area anchored by a large city, often in a warmer climate, is a popular relocating-retiree choice.
“Generally, people are moving from metropolitan counties where there are dense populations to other metropolitan counties that are less dense,” said Ron Manheimer, director of the University of North Carolina’s Center for Creative Retirement in Asheville, N.C.
Seventy-one percent of people age 60 and over who have relocated to another state in the five years leading up to the 2000 Census settled in metropolitan counties, Manheimer said, citing statistics from a forthcoming book that he edited: the second edition of “Retirement Migration in America,” by Charles Longino.
These days, the county’s top county for new retirees is Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix. In that five-year period, almost 69,000 people 60 and over settled there.
“People want all the amenities of the big city; they just don’t want to live in it,” Manheimer said, noting that the availability of shopping, major airports, cultural attractions and medical services figure into the decision on where to relocate.

Read the rest at the Real Estate Journal .

Three Colorado counties - Douglas, Park and Summit - were among seven across the country that saw the number of their senior residents double between 1990 and 2000, according to a census report, “65+ in the United States,” released Thursday.

The increase of retirees in a community can be a huge benefit but also add the costs to the community if they are not prepared. The old saw that you retire to Florida or Arizona is no longer as many folks are heading to the communities where their children and and grandchildren live.

I live in a community like this and it is a nice blend. There are subdivisions that are dedicated to senior living. The homes are designed with aging in place and are very well appointed.

“Some places are seeing a rapid increase in the age of their populations because (younger) families are leaving,” said Richard Suzman, director of the behavioral and social research program at the National Institute on Aging, which commissioned the report. “In other (places), retirees are moving to be closer to their children and grandchildren.”
The other counties where the senior population doubled during the 1990s were Nye, Nev.; Sumter, Fla.; and James City and Prince William, both in Virginia. via the  DenverPost.com