The launch comes as the Baby Boomers race into their elder years, creating what some observers have referred to as a “silver tsunami.”
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As the U.S. population grows ever older, Compass on Monday announced that it is launching a new division designed to meet the real estate needs of older adults.
The company calls the division Compass Plus and, in a statement, said it “will bridge the gap between older adults and essential real estate and adjacent services such as home health, move management, and estate planning.” Compass agents Richard Spiering, Ryan Garson, Knute Brookshier and Ruth Reffkin — the latter of whom is the mother of Compass CEO Robert Reffkin — are spearheading the division.
Richard Spiering
“As real estate agents, we are the boots on the ground in the community and have seen the need for more resources for older adults, who often lack family close by,” Spiering said in the statement.
The statement goes on to note that the U.S. population is becoming older, with 1 in 6 Americans being over the age of 65 at the start of the decade. That compares to just 1 in 20 in 1920.
This trend — which Compass anticipates is accelerating — is sometimes referred to as the “silver tsunami” and is due in part to the massive Baby Boomer generation reaching old age. At the same time, some subsequent generations, including Gen X and Gen Z, as well as Gen Alpha (today’s children), have been smaller relative to the Baby Boomers and Millennials — meaning that Baby Boomers aren’t just a larger generation, but also that they represent an atypically large share of the overall population.
The trend toward an older population is taking place in many other countries as well, and demographers believe it will have profound impacts on everything from the labor pool to retirement programs such as Social Security to housing.
‘The need for such specialized support has never been greater,” Compass notes in its statement, adding that older real estate consumers often need assistance with things such as renovations and staging.
Ruth Reffkin
Compass Plus will also draw on the resources of Compass Concierge, which is a firm the brokerage operates to help consumers get their homes ready for sale.
“At the end of the day,” Ruth Reffkin concluded in the statement, “real estate is a people business, and here is a division that is meant to help a population that needs dedicated, patient, and ethical support.”