10 Nov
This year’s 50 + Housing award winners and special kudos were profoundly directed towards recognizing emerging trends in the active adult and retirement market.
If you look at what the gold winners incorporated into their developments, you can easily see a reoccurring theme and spot emerging trends. I think we should all be paying attention to these trends. A winning development in California was leased up with in a month of opening and has a waiting list of 311 people. Read the full story here to see what they did to get this amazing consumer response.
Below are the 3 major trends of the award winning developments.
Provide Options In Areas That Residents Enjoy
Many, if not all of the winners, gave their residents multiple dinning options. The 50+ groups love to socialize with one other. They also enjoy having a comfortable dining area in a clubhouse where they can have parties and host other social gatherings. It was a great idea to expand on this amenity. Why not provide residents with a high quality dinning experience? This is what is important to them. Options are appealing to potential residents.
This is a great example of understanding your target market and designing a product with their interests in mind.
Contemporary and Sustainable Design
An emergence of contemporary design in the 50+ markets is very evident. This is an interesting point because most developers design their models to look like the homes their residents are moving from and not a fresh approach.
I think this is a very important point. Having room for the antique heirloom is still important, but it is obvious that they are looking for a new look and a new lifestyle.
Sherwood Village in California was the states first successful rebate application under the solar Initiative’s Multifamily Affordable Solar Housing (MASH) program. Being green is important to many demographics as long as it ads value in the form of dollar signs.
Easy Access to Transit
The article also noted that convenient access to public transit was a major factor in the success of the award winning developments. The 50+ crowd who are looking for urban are also looking for easy access to dining, shopping, arts and entertainment. If you cant proved a form of transit on-site, it is still a good idea to have near by access. The 50+ would love to park the car and leave it there.
How Can We Use These Trends To Our Advantage?
What do you think? Would you use any of these ideas in your next development? Let us know by leaving a comment below.