HOUSTON: Time to throw out the notion of the “stuffy” grandparents houses like we used to visit in our childhoods. Who doesn’t remember as kids going to visit the grandparents, and how the house seemed to us more like a museum than a place to live?
These days, however, Baby Boomer retirees are leading the way with large-scale home renovations. And they’re not scared of new, state-of-the-art technologies either.
Some 80 percent are interested in innovative ways of reducing their home expenses, such as using smart thermostats or apps to control appliances. Another 58 percent are interested in technologies to help maintain their home, such as cleaning robots or heated driveways, says David Baxter, a senior vice president with Age Wave, a research and consulting company that teamed with Merrill Lynch to gauge what retirees are doing with their living arrangements.
“This idea that people are renovating and innovating in their home in retirement is such a cool thing, and it’s contrary to what people expect and is portrayed in the media,” Baxter says. There’s a lot of action here.”