New B&C president keeps eye on boomer market

The new president of Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc. - the Grand Strand’s largest local real estate developer - says the company is closely watching the habits and decisions of the baby boomer generation as the company makes plans for future development.

Jim Rosenberg, 54, has taken over as the head of B&C with 30 years of real estate development experience - and the mission of transforming the company to focus specifically on residential and commercial development and broadening it into the Southeast.

And what he’s tracking is the boomers - where they’re going, what they want and how much they’ll pay for it.

• While the market is dipping, Rosenberg expects that boomer relocation - as the oldest of the 78 million of them start retiring in the next few years - will change that.

A study from the National Association of Realtors says 42 percent of them want to retire to the South.

• “Myrtle Beach and South Carolina are going to boom,” he said Aug. 2, his first day on the job. “If you think the last 14 years was high growth, fasten your seat belt.”

• Rosenberg said Tuesday that the long-term market is headed up.

• “You’re always going to have dips, but if you look over a 10-year period, it’s consistently growing. It’ll pick back up. All this loan disaster will straighten out,” he said. “Construction has slowed down. Everybody is kind of holding back. Dips happen, but I think prices have gone about as low as they’re going to go.”

Boomers seen in Myrtle Beach’s future

• Boomers want communities with 500,000 people or less, they represent 70 percent of the nation’s net worth and they buy second homes - all factors that look positive for Myrtle Beach, Rosenberg said.

• Boomers also take long trips, he said, so Myrtle Beach’s recent ranking by a national traveler survey as the second-most-popular family summer destination, behind Orlando, Fla., bodes well for the area, too.

The company is doing its own demographic research, and combining it with sources such as The Brookings Institute and the National Tour Association’s Research & Development Council.

• That boomer research will effect what happens at the former Pavilion and Myrtle Square Mall sites, both of which B&C owns. Rosenberg says boomers like self-contained walkable villages offering a mix of residential and commercial. Those preferences will drive plans at those high-profile sites still to be developed.

Source: Jenny Burns, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, SC