are empty nesters moving downtown a myth? (transportation, walkable, community)
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I have heard it implied that no empty nesters move to central cities, for various reasons. That seems incorrect to me. Do you have evidence/anecdotes of any particular empty nesters who have moved to a central city?
Every decade or so I read of a "back to the city" movement. Either it doesn't really exist or these movements end......without the news articles to inform us of their demise.
eek. that's kinda sad. I thought Chicago was recovering nicely.
Downtown Chicago and the north side have grown and gentrified over the last decade. There is tons of new construction and residential development in this part of the city. However, that part of the city only covers about 25%-30% of the city's land area, and the rest of the city is not that desirable and is losing population.
As far as empty nesters go, yes, there are a good deal that have moved into downtown Chicago. There was actually a 55+ retirement highrise recently built around the corner from where I live.
That's evidence that one person did it, sort of like the articles in these links when you actually read them. A city of 30,000 isn't quite comparable to NYC or even Denver, either.
Ive given you multiple links, anecdotes, etc.
Short of doing a full fledged detailed study using census data, maybe surveys, etc, I am not sure what else you want (and if you want me to do that kind of study,you are going to have to pay me )
Its enough of a widespread phenom its been widely noticed by people who live in center cities. It easy to get an anecdote fairly quickly in one of CD's less well read forums. Its gotten media attention. And there have been developments built with this market in mind.
Now, is at as large a demo as YOUNG people living in center cities. No, its not. Is it the majority of all empty nesters - no, its not. But it still seems to be a notable phenom.
I would point out though, that one of the constraining factors is the high price of center city real estate. IE "no one goes there, its too crowded" in the immortal words of Yogi Berra. That hardly seems to me like evidence that central city revival is weakening, or that there is not a real demand for more transit oriented, walkable, communities.
At the national level, empty-nest retirement-age suburban homeowners are not flocking to urban areas in great numbers. In particular, based on the last decade’s experience, in a given five-year period, only two percent of all empty-nest retirement-age suburban homeowners can be expected to move to an urban area.
Suburban empty-nesters are just as likely to move to a non-metropolitan area as they are to an urban area.
The suburban-to-urban flow of homeowners represents just 5 percent of the stock of all retirement-age empty-nest homeowners located in central cities. When the urban-to-suburban flow of empty-nesters is taken into account, the net migration effect from the suburbs to urban area is –7.2 percent. Any return of empty-nesters to the urban core is not enough to stem the tide of urban-suburban flight.
Over all metropolitan areas, 76 percent of empty-nest suburbanites who moved to urban areas were white, 60 percent were married, 25 percent were divorced and just over 40 percent had college degrees and were younger than 55, respectively. About half of these movers had incomes of $40,000 or less, and three-quarters had incomes of $70,000 or less.
Empty-nest suburbanites moving back to the urban core in the 10 largest metropolitan areas were more likely to be non-white, more highly educated, and to have incomes greater than $70,000, respectively, than movers in all other metropolitan areas.
Although the housing and mortgage markets associated both with second homes and empty-nest movers are small, they will experience sustained growth as the Baby Boomers age, simply because of the sheer size of the Baby Boom cohort. In the next ten years, the number of second homes is forecast to grow by 2 million housing units according to these projections. However, there does not appear to be substantial growth in second-home mortgage activity on the horizon: the number of second-home mortgages is only forecast to grow by a total of 500,000 loans in the decade.
The city I was talking about was Sandusky, OH. Obviously a very small city, but it's slowly turning around it's downtown into a more lively, urban center, with vacant spaces in old buildings being developed into new restaurants and apartments and what not.
Ok. This is similar to the situation I envisioned for my parents when I said it would not cost them money to move into the city (in the other thread). I had calculated with a two-bedroom in a slightly less fancy neighborhood. Numbers are slightly similar, and it points out the savings in property taxes.
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