coldwell banker cb - Watertown Daily Times

PROGRESS 2008
WATERTOWN DAILY TIMES Sunday,March Day,Month Date,Year 2,2008 19 C5
Boomers seek greener housing as their hair goes gray
By STEPHINE I. COHEN
MARKETWATCH
PRINCETON, N.J. — Shea
Homes, one of the nation’s
largest home builders, believes
baby boomers are looking for
communities that make an environmental
difference.
In February, Shea announced
the opening of Victoria Gardens,
an “active lifestyle,” or retirement,
development in Florida
sandwiched between Orlando
and Daytona Beach. The homes
were advertised as having a carbon
footprint that is 20 percent
to 30 percent less than that of a
“typical household.”
Billed as eco-friendly and energy-wise,
the homes feature solar
attic fans, green-fiber recycled
insulation, motion-sensor
triggered lighting, energy-efficient
windows and appliances,
and garages outfitted with electric-vehicle
charging stations.
Shea says it has focused on
small, incremental green features
that will collective add up
to energy savings.
Housing developments that
By REID KANALEY
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
With many of us facing the
problem of how to pay back
mounting debts, here is a look at
Web sites explaining how to recover
from “debt fatigue.”
GOOD DEBT
This seven-part lesson starts
with the “top things to know.”
These include knowing that
there’s debt that usually is considered
good — for a home or college
— and plenty of debt that’s bad —
use of a credit card for food or vacations,
for example. See
http://money.cnn.com/maga
zines/moneymag/money101/l
esson9/
CONSUMER REPORTS
“Getting into debt is easy,”
says this article. But then what?
target baby boomers may be the
next big push for the green housing
market and statistics indicate
this could be a good marriage.
“There is no doubt that the green
trend is going to accelerate more
and more,” said Rick Andreen,
president of Shea Homes Active
Lifestyle Communities division,
in a recent interview.
Victoria Gardens marks Shea’s
debut in the Florida retirement
market though the company is
building similar homes in
northern and southern California,
Arizona and Washington.
The energy-efficient features are
considered standard in these
homes.
Other retirement communities
from Texas to Maine are taking
similar steps and adding
green features to existing homes.
An Army retirement community
in San Antonio recently announced
plans to install solar
hot water systems in the community’s
180 homes. Sea Coast
Management Co., which manages
retirement communities in
Maine, is offering existing residents
incentives to install solar
hot water heaters and offering a
Toyota Prius and/or a free solar
hot water system to new customers
purchasing a home.
Baby boomers, born between
1946 and 1964, grew up alongside
the environmental movement
of the 1960s and’70s.
“These guys were at Woodstock,”
said Matthew Kahn, a
professor at UCLA’s Institute of
the Environment. “This is the
birth cohort that was at the environmental
movement’s summer
of love.”
In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau
estimated there were approximately
78.2 million baby
boomers in America. A December
2007 survey by AARP found
that roughly half of all boomers
see themselves as environmental
stewards, or “green
boomers.”
Besides being a large swath of
the population, boomers are
overwhelmingly homeowners.
Boomers are also far more affluent
than earlier generations of
retirees, making it more likely
Online advice: beating debt
Be cautious in choosing a credit
counselor, for one thing, because
some of them are disreputable.
And don’t expect a quick
fix. “It generally takes about five
years to pay off debts with a
debt-management plan,” the
site warns. It’s www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/creditloan/controlling-debt-106/
CREDIT COUNSELING
Two groups try to keep tabs
on credit counselors by setting
standards for them. Check out
these sites to find the groups’
members:
The first is for the Association
of Independent Consumer
Credit Counseling Agencies at
www.aiccca.org/
The second is the National
Foundation for Credit Counseling.
www.nfcc.org/
DEBT BOMB
Get a definition of a term, such
as “debt bomb,” at this site. Investopedia
has an enjoyable dictionary
that will toss you a “term
of the day,” and let you browse by
category.www.investopedia.com
/terms/d/debtbomb.asp
PAY FIRST
At Bankrate.com, there’s a bit
of advice on how to prioritize
your debts for deciding which to
pay off first. Basically, there are
two choices with credit cards.
One is to concentrate on the bill
carrying the highest interest rate.
The other is to pay the smallest
bill first, then the next smallest.
The site can be found at
www.bankrate.com/brm/news
/cc/19980713.asp
that they will consider paying a
premium for environmentally
friendly housing features.
Builders have been studying
and surveying boomers and
while this generation is far from
homogenous the industry sees
some evidence that today’s new
wave of environmental concerns
and rising energy costs
will factor into boomers’ housing
decisions. Shea started advertising
its green activelifestyle
homes in January 2008.
Going green in retirement
doesn’t have to mean living off
the grid or in minimalist space,
according to builders. That’s
good since many boomers aren’t
looking to trade in their current
homes for smaller accommodations
as they get older, according
to a 2007 report on the state of
the nation’s housing released by
Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing
Studies.
How green do boomers want
to go when it comes to housing?
So far boomers seem to want to
enjoy high-end living in their later
years but they are interested in
By PAUL B. BROWN
NEW YORK TIMES
In a gift to marketers — and
trivia buffs — everywhere, The
American magazine has put together
a fascinating look at “the
diurnal and nocturnal habits” of
the average U.S. resident.
Here are snapshots from the
report compiled by Karlyn Bowman,
using results from a survey
conducted by the Gallup Organization
in August.
When asked what they wear
to work most days, about 6 percent
said “formal business
clothes”; 52 percent said “casual
business”; 25 percent said “casual
street clothes, such as jeans”;
and 15 percent said they wore a
using less energy in the process.
“What baby boomers are
looking for is the Lexus hybrid”
rather than the Prius, Andreen
said. “Baby boomers are focused
first on what they want.”
Shea’s homes are trying to tap
this niche market, blending luxury
living with energy efficiency,
according to the company. The
homes being offered include energy-efficient
appliances and insulated
windows combined
alongside gourmet kitchens and
master suites that resemble a
“spa-like sanctuary.” And like
plenty of Florida retirement communities,
these homes are also
tucked amid hundreds of acres of
parkland, and sport an 18-hole
golf club and a tennis center.
Boomers interested in a resort-like
setting that has some
claim to being green are likely to
be “well-educated, rich and Barbara
Streisand fans,” Kahn said.
They are also going to be looking
for like-minded neighbors and a
community that values the
same things they do, he added.
Energy efficiency is one topic
that boomers are willing to pay
an upfront premium for in
housing, Andreen said. The
green options that now come
with Shea’s retirement homes
add about 5 percent to 8 percent
onto the cost of a home.
“They will claim in survey data
that they are willing to pay
more” but they haven’t actually
displayed that in their buying
patterns, he added.
“People are still making up
their mind about what they
think about these (green) products
and what they are willing to
pay,” Kahn said.
Shea says these homes
achieve a 50 percent reduction
in the therms associated with
heating water, 75 percent reduction
in energy used from lighting,
40 percent reduction in energy
used from clothes washers,
and a 41 percent reduction energy
used by dishwashers.
The company plans to build
20,000 of these homes over the
next 10 years with 1,400 to 1,500
expected to come online this
year.
A look at what we wear to work,
how we get there, how much we do
uniform. About 67 percent of
men said they never wore a tie at
work. And 20 percent said they
did so “occasionally.”
The “hours worked in a typical
week (mean): 43.6.”
When asked how much time
their colleagues waste during the
day, the mean number reported
was 90 minutes. When asked
how much time they waste, respondents
said one hour.
About 8 percent said their
commute took two hours or
more, while 28 percent said it
took them 30 minutes or less.
The most common response, at
36 percent, was 30 to 59 minutes.
About 85 percent of respondents
said they usually drove to
work. Only 4 percent said they
took mass transit, while just 3
percent said they walked.
On ttheir personal best time
of day, 55 percent said mornings,
15 percent said afternoons,
20 percent said evenings, and 6
percent said late nights. Presumably
the other 4 percent are
cranky all the time.
We end with a depressing
number. Citing research by the
National Endowment for the
Arts, Reader’s Digest writes, “38
percent of employers consider
high school graduates deficient
as readers.”
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