Who Do You Think You Are?

Always thought about researching your own family history?  It's now much easier to access official records, even if your family origin was overseas. Family trees, immigration and convict records, births, deaths and marriages records are all now searchable online.

And once you get the material together - who knows, you may even want to self publish your own book or create and publish an album with old family photos to share with other family members and ensure it's passed down to future generations?

To help you get started, we've collected how-to tips and helpful website links on the Seniors Housing Online News and Information page.

Babyboomers driving the Sydney residential property market.

Retirees are driving the Sydney property market, with the babyboomers now choosing medium and high density housing, according to BIS Shrapnel, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 7th march 2011:

"Baby Boomers will continue to be the main drivers of Sydney's residential market over the next five years with their take-up of medium- and high-density living. The generation of ageing, downsizing owner-occupiers - rather than younger renters - is expected to occupy an increasingly larger proportion of units and townhouses as the population ages, the real estate research firm BIS Shrapnel said.

''Activity in the Sydney residential market has largely been driven by the passage of the baby-boomer generation - firstly in the 1970s and early 1980s as first-home buyers and then as second and subsequent upgrading from the mid-1980s to the present," the BIS Shrapnel managing director, Robert Mellor, said.

"With their children having left the family home and retirement approaching, I expect this group will become an increasingly important source of occupier demand for higher-density dwellings between 2011 and 2015.''

To read more click here: SMH 7/3/11

New search options for babyboomers seeking retirement property.

Keeping up with the babyboomers’ rapidly growing demand for high quality over 50’s retirement property, leading Australian retirement property website www.seniorshousingonline.com.au has overhauled the site to dramatically improve search functionality, incorporate google maps and state of the art optimization with a fresh, modern look.
 “It is now much easier to locate suitable retirement property for sale or rent”, explains website co-founder Amanda Graham.  “Visitors have the option to select features such as waterfront, golf course and pet friendly living, with or without care services to suit their circumstances. They can tailor their search to match their personal preferences and needs.  Most of our website visitors are the young retirees – the babyboomers - active over 50’s, searching for lifestyle properties with resort facilities, but we also feature senior rental properties and aged care facilities too,” Graham says.
Since May this year, Seniors Housing Online has been working with Classified Ad Ventures on a technology review of the website, and the changes were put in place by Redback Solutions.  CAV chief information officer Chris Vulovic explains: “like most property websites, seniorshousingonline.com.au had a standard location based search.  Retirees are more interested in the facilities of a retirement village and the general location than they are the specific suburb. So we added 25 features that a retiree can filter properties by, including property features, support available, onsite facilities and location. This level of classification is a massive benefit for the users of the site allowing them to quickly find properties in areas that have services or features that are critical to them.”
Vulovic says traffic to seniorshousingonline.com.au should increase dramatically as a result of this property classification, as it allows the site to optimise its content for specific long tail search phrases for search engines.  “When a user types in ‘Retirement Properties with Low Level Aged Care in Sydney,’ the optimised content on the site will ensure that the portal is in the top of the results, driving traffic to the site,” Vulovic says.
Along with these changes to the website’s search, new ad products replace banner ads with the opportunity to buy contextual ads, such as those showing similar properties on property details pages. “These types of ads are highly effective because they are related to the visitor’s current search,” says Vulovic.
Visit website: www.seniorshousingonline.com.au  and see also: http://www1.propertyportalwatch.com/2010/10/cav-overhauls-seniors-portal