Early in my Real Estate career, I decided to specialize and work with Baby Boomers planning for and getting ready for retirement. My reason? Well, I thought I would enjoy spending time helping people my own age make a choice they would be very happy with. During my previous lives, and yes I had several, I was relocated often and it is not easy to decide where and how you want to live in places you barely know. I lived in New York, twice, Washington, DC, twice, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Wilmington, NC, and Wilmington, DE, not in that order. As hard as it is when you're totally involved in your career, I thought, it must be a lot harder to figure out where you want to live when it's just about what you want. Maybe I'll write another blog post about some of the places I've lived, but back to becoming part of this group called Seniors.
The only specific education on this whole new market was from the Seniors Real Estate Specialists group that was yet even sanctioned by the National Association of Realtors! I took the classes and spent two years serving on the Advisory Committee helping to research the needs of this new group of real estate clients. Everyone and every business was trying to determine just what these Boomers where going to want and what to call them. Seniors? I think not. Builders hired marketing specialists and they all professed to know what Boomers wanted. I thought the answer was not so easy. What makes the Boomers an interesting group of people is their diversity. There is no one answer, no one box that we can be squeezed into.
No matter how hard we try, even the youngest and healthiest of us Baby Boomers are going to become Seniors. I've had calls lately from more than one client bringing me up to date on the serious illness of their spouse. What a shock when I realize this is someone my own age.
We spend a lot of time with our clients and we get to know many of them very well. A call like the one this morning reminds me to live life now. Life is what happens while we're busy planning after all so don't spend all your time planning, go out and enjoy life on your own terms today.