Has any one noticed, or is just me, that the home builders in Collin County, TX (and probably in many parts of the country) seem to be some what oblivious to the fact that the baby boomers are starting to down size and/or retire. The problem is that these "boomers" are mostly looking for single story homes because as they get older, they don't want to be going up and down steps to use certain rooms in their home.

Builders keep putting up two story homes with 30 to 40% of the living space on the second floor. Now I realize that because land is expensive, builders need to build two story homes to get the square footage that buyers are looking for. In other words, the foot print of a single story home won't fit on most of these lots, and still give the optimum square footage or number of rooms that builders believe buyers want.    

I know of two couples, "baby boomers", that have installed simple, open sided elevators in their current two story homes, because it was far less expensive to do this than sell their current home and first find, then purchase a single story home. These people were lucky that their homes actually had space that could be reconfigured and an elevator installed.

I believe that builders need to start designing two story homes with elevators as an option. This might be an expensive option, but I believe that buyers would definetely recover the investment when they resell the home some day. It might also be a great advertising item for builders, since baby boomers would no longer eliminate their two story floor plans from their search for a new home.