• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, November 6, 2006

Home Depot sees a big marketing opportunity in recent research it commissioned on Baby Boomers: 60 percent of 50-plus Americans plan to live in their existing home for the foreseeable future.

Of the 30,000 consumers surveyed, 65 percent said they plan to remodel or improve their homes. The trigger is usually a life event such as retirement, the birth of a grandchild, caring for an elderly parent, or an adult child moving home.

Another compelling point to Home Depot is this number: 42 percent of the home improvement projects will be done by outside contractors, according to the study conducted by Focalyst, a joint venture of AARP and Kantar, the research arm of WPP.

The Home Depot research offers more evidence that when it comes to housing, Baby Boomers just aren't behaving the way they were expected to.

A recent report by the Mortgage Bankers Association, for example, found that of the 43 million U.S. households headed by people 50-plus--only 15 percent, or 6.6 million--owned a second home.

Those homes were either inherited or bought with cash: Second homes account for only 4 percent of mortgages.

That image of retirees spending more time at the lake is bogus, too--two-thirds of 50-plus second-home owners spend fewer than four weeks per year in their second home.