March 20, 2009 - WINK's - Women with Income and No Kids...........They are everywhere!

WINKs Lead Wave of Future Buyers........

Women & Income & No Kids

WINKs Make Developers Smile

Luma Oweis, a geotechnical engineer who founded her own company four years ago, is single, childless and a first-time buyer. She recently visited the site of the apartment she is buying in Morristown.

In a generally weaker market for condominiums, one type of buyer is showing increasing strength: WINKs. Housing trend analysts came up with the acronym for “women with income, no kids.”

Last year in New Jersey, almost half of all condominium buyers — 45 percent — were women in this category, analysts say. That fact dovetails with the findings of various national studies that over the last decade, the number of unmarried women buying housing of any type increased 20 percent.

The Otteau Valuation Group in New Brunswick recently reported that in New Jersey, WINKs represented 21 percent of all buyers last year, up from 14 percent the year before.

The percentage of single male buyers rose to 10 percent from 9 during that period.

“Amongst all single-woman buyers, condos are far and away the most popular choice,” said Jeffrey G. Otteau, who heads the group, a housing-trend analytical company.

Of the studies bolstering that finding, one conducted two years ago by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies has been described as the first major analysis of female buyers.

The terms “unmarried” or “single” include the not-yet-married, the divorced and the widowed, Mr. Otteau said. Women with grown children or children who do not live in the household are also included.

“I didn’t know I would be called that,” said Luma Oweis, who recently bought a two-bedroom condo at 40 Park, a building now under construction in Morristown. “But it fits.”

Ms. Oweis, 36, a geotechnical engineer who founded her own company four years ago, is single, childless and a first-time buyer. She said she decided on a condo because, “I think it’s a good lifestyle for me: convenient, in the center of town, only two miles from my office.”

She said she preferred the “social atmosphere” of a condo to the relative isolation of a single-family house, and wanted to “look out the door and see action, and buzzing around.”

Also, Ms. Oweis said, she often works 18-hour days and eats out a lot during the week, so she is excited about the prospect of being able to walk to restaurants in downtown Morristown.

Unit prices at 40 Park start in the low $500,000s and exceed $1 million for penthouses overlooking the historic Morristown Green. But market analysts say that the surge in WINK condo buyers holds true across the price spectrum.

In addition, some brokers said they had already noted that single women were increasingly part of a separate recession-related mini-trend: shared housing.

At the Mill Pond at Eatontown, a newly built development where two-bedrooms start at $252,990, Nancy and Ann Mareska, sisters aged 48 and 45, each bought condos.

Also at Mill Pond, Joan Marangella, 68, and Liz Campoli, 52, who are longtime friends, became joint purchasers of a two-bedroom. Every unit in the complex has nine-foot ceilings and a patio or deck.

All four of the women are divorced. As the Harvard study noted, women who owned homes while married frequently have equity available to invest in new homes.

“Lizzie and I were both looking to downsize,” said Ms. Marangella, who has grown children and is a supervisor at a cardiology group.

“I felt the economy and everything was going downhill. It is important to foresee these things, and make a conscious decision.”

Several studies of female buyers have noted that while unmarried women have lower average incomes than unmarried men and couples, they are less likely to finance their home purchases, and that if they borrow, they borrow less.

Tara Gellatley, who set herself a goal of having a custom-built abode by the age of 35, is currently picking out tiles, trims and fixtures for the condominium that she is buying at Water’s Edge at Point Pleasant, a Pulte Homes development.

“I’m proud of buying as a single woman,” said Ms. Gellatley, 33. “You put yourself on a tight budget, set guidelines and boundaries, and you can do it.”

Ms. Gellatley, who is employed in her father’s maritime shipping business, bought her first condo in Brick 10 years ago when she worked in the hotel industry.

The Harvard study found that unmarried women are much less likely to live with their parents than single men are.

But the question of whether WINKs are more likely to receive financial help from family members to establish their own households was not addressed.

Certainly, it happens.

“I really wanted to have my own place,” said 25-year-old Christine Corrales, who owns a one-bedroom apartment at the Trump Plaza in Jersey City. “My mom became an investor so I could do that.”

Ms. Corrales says she is thrilled with the secure, “hotel-like” atmosphere at Trump, where the 24-hour concierge is there should she forget her keys, and the people from the in-house dog-walking service always say hello.

Ms. Gellatley, meanwhile, is financing her own purchase, but moving into the same complex where her father bought a penthouse condo last year.

And Ms. Oweis will be living just two blocks away from her parents. They recently bought a condo at the Vail Mansion development in Morristown.

Original Story - New York Times

Related Story - November 4, 2008

The fastest growing home buyer population that will reach its peak buying years beginning in 2012 will be Generation Y women. Shyam Kannan with RCLCO told attendees at Big Builder's 2nd Annual Architect Challenge session on Nov. 3, that this consumer group will "peak in 2015, and the group is poised to outnumber and outspend the boomer generation." This segment, dubbed by RCLCO as WINKs--women with income and no kids--is bringing to the table a consumer market that has very distinct demands for what they want in their homes, mainly a balance of the live-work lifestyle, with amenity-stocked homes in communities that offer all their necessities.

Women making decisions when it comes to buying is no new phenomenon, with them typically being in control of 80% of retail purchases for a home, but WINKs are expected to make up 43% of all Gen-Y, bringing the total number of female heads of households to 31 million, four times what it was in the 1970s.

"They multitask and have found the work-life balance early on," Kannan said. They want "smaller and closer" he added.

Taking RCLCO's research on one of the next forces in home buying, Big Builder challenged five architectural firms to design a community for WINKs for one of two sites: a plan for East Coast living, plus two product lines across the street from a university with public transit nearby; and a West Coast for an 11-acre site with an abandoned big box store and an elevated freeway as neighbors in a mature neighborhood.Designs by BSB Design, Cubellis, Dahlin Group, BcDc, and KTGY took on the challenge and designed communities with an "urban-lite" feel, combining amenity-enriched neighborhoods with individual residences that would allow for entertaining, relaxing, and working.

Designing for the West Coast site, BSB Design's Cooper Walk placed 250 units on 11 acres, offering WINKs 15 floor plans in condo models because "WINKs want choice," said BSB's Kerrin West. The design brought in plentiful parking in an underground facility with a retail/residential mix above.

John Thatch with Dahlin Group took a different approach to the West Coast design, utilizing Spanish-style architecture in the community of 164 units with paseos throughout. The overall theme was outdoor living, with residences having large patios to act as outdoor rooms and connectivity through the neighborhood with walking trails and a Main Street in the center of the design.

KTGY's Manny Gonzalez took the book "Trillion Dollar Women" to heart when designing for the West Coast site, picking up on three types of future women buyers: the Sophisticated Entertainer, the Modern Urbanite, and the Serenity Seeker. KTGY took the attributions of each woman and designed a unique space that would fit into their lifestyle--offering different floor plans and elevations to match each personality.

Each design featured a "memory point," as Gonzalez put it, which was a reading nook off the master suite for the Serenity Seeker, along with a large gourmet kitchen. The Modern Urbanite has the conveniences of everything being practically designed along with units being places in the heart of the community, in the mix of everything that is happening. And the Serenity Seeker's design is based off resort-style architecture with definitive spaces for entertaining and personal space, also specifically separating the in-house office from the sleeping quarters.

Architects designing for the East Coast site also kept an amenity-rich mindset, offering their WINKs outdoor living mixed with smaller, functional indoor spaces.

Cubellis' Rohit Anand focused his residence designs with entertainment and community in mind--small front yards with large porches, integrating the private space into the community's public areas. He also added that buyers need to make sure WINKs know that "[builders] get their lifestyle."

BcDc's Bernie Costello added his vision for the East Coast site by presenting the idea that people want "new in an older neighborhood." He did this by designing urban, modern architecture into the infill project that utilizes the older, surrounding spaces as the community amenities for walking areas. He also brought in indoor/outdoor living through residence design with a lot of glass spaces in the smaller structures that have an "urban loft ideology taken down to a smaller size."

The session on Monday brought builders into the wave of future products to capitalize on the upcoming generation of buyers. Kannan also said builders need to rethink the way they market to home buyers of the future. But Kannan also pointed out that the building industry does not only have to rethink the design of homes in the future, it also must rethink the marketing tools to get products noticed--through social network avenues such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere.

Original Story - Big Builder Online