Housing analysts say we might have already hit bottom. Fourteen of 20 metro areas indicate home prices have declined in excess of 10 percent in January 2009 versus January 2008, according to S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices. It may be a buyer's market, but boomers aren't buying.
While boomers dominated sales in the vacation and investment-home market in the first part of the decade, sales dropped an average 24 percent last year as compared to 2007, according to the National Association of Realtors' 2008 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey.
Still, experts remain optimistic about this market segment.
"While economic factors can affect sales from one year to the next, the fundamental demand from these large population groups will remain," says Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. "Given that most people become interested in buying a second home in their 40s, the bulge of population approaching middle age should drive the second-home market over the next decade."
