When courting baby boomers, use strategic staging to get their attention.

By: Evelyn Long

Selling houses to baby boomers—a demographic that holds tremendous real estate wealth—can be challenging. Retirees seeking forever homes usually want to stretch their pensions in any way they can, and that means making a decision between staying put or seeking out a new location.

Older adults who do wish to transition out of their current houses and downsize may take their time to explore the market until they find the property that fits their lifestyle goals and is within their price range.

So, how do you convince these discerning home buyers to sign on the dotted line? Here are five practical staging tips to grab their interest.

1. Underscore Durable Materials

Baby boomers may gravitate toward house features that can age with them. They may want to spend their sunset years pursuing personal interests—and disruptive, time-consuming home improvement is not in their retirement plans.

If you want your listing to stand out, make long-lasting, low-maintenance home features front and center. Metal roofing and fiber cement siding can last for decades with basic cleaning. Quartz countertops—made up almost entirely of by-products from other manufacturing processes—are heavy-duty, nonporous, resisting scratches, chips and stains. Porcelain tile, stone and luxury vinyl are hard-wearing flooring materials for high-traffic and high-moisture areas and are effortless to clean.

Only some homes have these features, but lacking any or all of them shouldn’t stop you from making a solid case for durability. Focus on your listings’ strengths to persuade older adults to put in offers.

2. Accentuate Energy and Water Efficiency

Retirees have limited disposable income, and homes that help them reduce their utility bills win their favor.

Spotlight the resource-efficient features of your listings. LED lights, ENERGY STAR-certified home appliances, windows and glazed doors, and WaterSense-labeled faucets, toilets, showerheads and irrigation systems indicate lower energy and water expenses.

Hire an energy auditor to evaluate a house’s insulation, uncover its air leaks and address them accordingly. Considering that 89% of single-family homes in the United States are under-insulated, according to the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association’s 2024 study, a complete thermal enclosure system can make any house significantly more efficient and sustainable than most properties on the market.

3. Emphasize Aging-in-Place Features

Prudent older homeowners may be particular about accessibility features. Retirees looking to buy a house may desire to age in place. They anticipate their future needs and want a property that lets them live independently and comfortably while dealing with possible physical impairments, such as mobility challenges and vision loss.

Essential home features to improve accessibility and safety include wide doorways and hallways, grab bars, nonslip flooring and walk-in showers with chairs. If there’s a no-step entry into the house, promote it in your listings. A ramp is optional, but it would be a definite draw for wheelchair users.

Multistory houses typically have stairways with handrails on both sides. To make stairs even more accessible, add contrast strips to the steps to enhance visibility.

Ideally, the flooring should be a single, continuous material to minimize or eliminate transitions and thresholds, which can pose tripping hazards. Cover concrete, stone or ceramic flooring with non-shag carpeting to lessen the impact of a fall. Swap knobs for handles and higher cabinets for lower ones with pull-down or pull-out shelves.

4. Demonstrate First-Floor Functionality

Older adults may favor main-floor living. The ground floor should have everything they need to support aging in place because using the stairs can cause discomfort, even if they are optimized for people with physical impairments.

The first-floor owner’s suite is the single most desirable accessibility feature for retirees. This room makes the lives of older adults convenient and comfortable, as it renders any point of the house close.

When staging houses with no primary bedroom on the main floor, create cozy spots to make up for this deficiency. For example, putting a daybed with soft pillows next to a window gives the homeowner a place to rest and sleep properly without going upstairs.

5. Highlight More Space

Downsizing boomers may love houses with fewer but bigger rooms. Many actively seek spare bedrooms to accommodate visiting guests — and possibly boomerang kids.

Americans are getting more accustomed to multigenerational living, with more baby boomer parents living under the same roof as their adult children.

Staging all available bedrooms as bedrooms is crucial to grab the interest of empty nesters looking for forever homes with enough private space for boomerang kids. As home prices soar, some retirees may be preparing for the likelihood that their priced-out adult children may return to stay with them for some time.

Ride the Silver Tsunami with Spot-On Home Staging

Easy upkeep, low utility costs, increased accessibility, a high-performance ground floor and ample space are the top priorities of downsizing baby boomers. Staging with these motivations in mind could help make your listings stand out.