Baby Boomers and Housing Trends

Census data was used to compile this special report on Housing Trends Among Baby Boomers by the Research Institute for Housing America. This is a 76 page PDF, so don't hit print without specifying what page you want to print.

Greensboro Public Library Resources

Michelle Jarboe just told me about a great resource through the Greensboro Public Library. Business reporters will love it, but anyone writing on downtown development will find it useful. Below Michelle describes how to get access. She also tells us about some other resources at the Library that you might not know about. - Thx Michelle!

It’s a new marketing tool that can give you a detailed look at area consumers by generating reports on market data. It’s free for anyone who has a library card, and includes information like demographic and income profiles, consumer spending and market segmentation profiles. You can also obtain more specialized reports for a discounted fee through the library. To get there:

Go to www.greensborolibrary.org
Click on Premium Information Resources
Enter your library card number
Scroll down and click on Marketing and Demographics link
Follow the instructions to enter Business Decision
The library’s user ID is “gsolibrary” and its password is “greensboro.” You can use this, or you can create your own account under the library’s account by entering some personal information, including your e-mail address. The advantage of having your own account is that you can get your reports e-mailed to you and you can keep your searches private – the site archives searches for a time, so if you’re using the library’s login, other people can see what you’ve searched.

Right now this is limited to the local MSA (Greensboro-High Point Metropolitan Statistical Area) in terms of the starting address you use to generate a report, but the library is looking at expanding to a nationwide service.

Other interesting services I didn’t know the library offers include:

Mergent Online: A database of public companies in the U.S. and internationally. Accessible using a library card number.
ReferenceUSA: A database offering general biz info about nearly every U.S. business. Good for b2b-type research. Accessible through NCLive with library card info.
Morningstar.com: Stock analysis and mutual fund performance info. Accessible through the Investment section of online resources using a library card.

Census Bureau Releases Housing Data

"The 2005 ACS data released today include housing characteristic information such as occupancy, units in structure, year built, rooms, occupants per room, vehicles available, house heating fuel, value, mortgage status, gross rent, selected monthly owner costs and other characteristics. Additional subjects covered in this release include means of transportation to work by workplace geography, geographic mobility by selected characteristics, characteristics of households and families, grandparents and the foreign-born population. Also surveyed are disability characteristics, work status in the past 12 months, occupancy and financial characteristics. The data are available for nearly 7,000 areas, including all congressional districts and counties, cities and American Indian/Alaska Native areas of 65,000 population or more. This survey is a first look at key housing information for many communities since Census 2000 – including 75 of the top 100 fastest growing cities."

See the entire news release or go directly to American FactFinder at http://www.census.gov.

Click here to see other news releases.