So, who are the homebuyers of today? As active real estate agents, we know they cannot be fit into a single description. Here are three small groups. I'll cover some more tomorrow. These are all ideas from Mark Penn's great book, Microtrends, and the labels in bold are from his book. To learn more about his book, see Part 1 of this series about my take on Microtrends.

Without kids, perhaps, people are freer to establish more homes - many married couples have two homes. Penn calls them "commuter couples" - they work in separate cities, or have a house where one of the couple stays during the week near work and then commutes "home" on weekends - or at least on some of the weekends. I know people in Flagstaff, Arizona who do this. Some prefer life in Flagstaff, but work in Phoenix or Cottonwood. Others prefer life in the Verde Valley, but have a condo in Flagstaff near their jobs at Northern Arizona University or Gore.

Then there are the "extreme commuters" - people whose daily commute is greater than 90 minutes, according to Mark Penn. They have one house, but hardly spend any time in it because they are in their cars for 3 or more hours per day. As Penn says, these are people who care a lot about the price of gas. I think we have a few of these in Flagstaff also. They prefer to live in Flagstaff and drive elsewhere for jobs.

Another important trend, and this one comes directly from National Association of Realtor^® statistics, is the number of single women homebuyers. This arises from what Penn calls the Sex-Ratio Singles. Simply put, there are not enough available men to match all the single women so if women want to own a house, they have to buy alone.

Photos are courtesy of flickr.com photographers found with the search "commuting":

And here is a link to a flickr.com photo reminiscent of my Chicago commute. (I left it behind for the short commute in Flagstaff nearly 13 years ago.)

There is more to come on Mark Penn's Microtrends tomorrow! Meanwhile, for info on Flagstaff real estate, visit our website.