Cater to Boomers or Millennials? Homebuilders Caught in Between
Las Vegas — The U.S. housing industry is being pulled in two directions. Baby boomers with big housing bucks to spend still rank at the top of many builders’ customer lists. But rising sales to millions of millennials have sent builders scrambling to tailor houses for the next generation of buyers. “Millennials are really coming into the market in significant numbers,” Dan DiClerico of Consumer Reports told homebuilders from around...
Builders Chase Millennials By Decreasing Price Scale
Surging prices almost have closed off the new-home market to young buyers like Brandon and Quincey Lindemann. But the Denver-area couple has found a way in. The Lindemanns in October paid $350,000 for a three-bedroom house at Tri Pointe Group Inc.’s Terrain, a new Castle Rock, Colo., community designed for first-time buyers. While the home has press-board kitchen counters and a yard too small for the children the Lindemanns plan to...
Midwest Flooding Forcing Evacuations
St. Louis — Floodwater was starting to recede at some water-logged Midwestern communities Thursday, but hundreds of homes were damaged, hundreds more remained evacuated, and getting through St. Louis by car, boat or train was increasingly difficult. The Mississippi River neared record levels at many places, and a tributary, the Meramec River, surged 4 feet beyond previous records before finally starting to fall. The rare wintertime...
City Property Values Point to Wealth Divide Within U.S. Cities
Washington — It’s still possible in Boston for a mail carrier, an accountant and a Harvard-trained psychiatrist — basically, the crowd from Cheers — to live as neighbors. That finding by the real estate brokerage Redfin makes the capital of Massachusetts a rarity at a time when neighborhoods in most U.S. cities are increasingly isolated from each other by income and home values. Redfin analyzed home sales over the past 24 months in 20...
The Hot Spots for Home Improvement: Who’s Rebuilding?
After doing just enough to maintain their homes in the wake of the Great Recession, Americans are starting to ramp up spending on backyard decks, spa-like bathrooms and other vanity improvements. The amount people spend on home remodeling and repair is anticipated to hit $325 billion this year, a level that hasn’t been reached since 2007, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Hanley Wood, a marketing services...
