Trouble at Home
Did Generation X’s nesting mania spark the economic meltdown?
by Susan Gregory Thomas
December 22, 2008
HELP THE AGED
But one of the chief reasons that Generation Xers spent more than other home owners on remodeling was that we bought charming, fixer-uppers — homey homes. According to the Joint Center 2005 research, 31 percent of Generation Xers lived in homes that are at least forty-five years old, compared with twenty-two percent of baby boomers when they were in their thirties. New housing developments? No, thanks — we saw Suburbia."New housing developments? No, thanks — we already saw Poltergeist, E.T., and Suburbia. Dude, we lived it.
The fixer-upper nesting phenomenon wasn't just limited to the coasts, either. In Spring 2007, Professional Remodeler featured the growth industry in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. The town's leading construction firm, Riggs Construction, estimated that eighty percent of its business came from Generation X buying up the bigger, older homes in town.
We also spent more because we wanted to be involved in the renovation, invested. Different from previous generations, who typically just deferred to the expertise of a contractor or decorator, Generation X wanted to be architect, decorator, HVAC engineer — or at least dabble in those roles. "Generation Xers want to have a remodeler help them buy rather than sell them," David Alpert, president of Continuum Marketing Group of Great Falls, Va., a firm that works with remodelers around the country, told Professional Remodeler. "They want to make a selection from a series of choices, but they want the remodeler to help them make the choice more intelligently."
Not only that, but according to professional home remodeling firm research, Xers depend more on the advice of their peers than earlier generations.
Tell me about it. In my Brooklyn neighborhood circa mid-2000, just sitting down in a friend's kitchen for a cup of coffee while the kids had a play-date basically involved passing your orals in some kind of Restoration Hardware version of dialectical materialism. The questions went along the lines of: "How did you guys seal your poured concrete counters without getting that icky "satin" look?"; "Is it dumb to go with carrera marble because it's so porous, or do you think stains just make it more homey?"; and "Now, did you have to go somewhere upstate to get your claw-foot re-enameled?" Useful footnotes were: "Those Franke sinks are crazy expensive, but don't ruin your whole kitchen just because you wanted to save three hundred bucks at the time"; "Go with the Bosch, definitely — it's so much quieter"; and, "When it came right down to it, I just loved the red knobs on the Wolf."
By the time you walked out, you'd have the names of at least two really good, semi-reliable general contractors (that's the best anyone can hope for); the most amazing (but pricey) wood-stripping guy in town; the best outlet for Wolf and Viking ranges; and the truth about Subzero refrigerators. When educated, otherwise grounded people are having conversations like this, are Nero and his violin far off?
