Looking for affluent Baby Boomers? You’ll find them in Cambridge.
The city on the north bank of the Charles River has one of the thickest concentrations in the country of people age 55 and up who pull down big incomes, according to a new report from real estate website Zillow.
About one in 12 Cambridge households aged at least 55 years – 7.7 percent – earn $350,000 or more. That’s the second-highest rate of 73 large and mid-sized cities that Zillow surveyed, behind only Arlington, Va. In Boston, 3.2 percent of Baby Boomers earn $350,000 or more. That’s still in the top 15 cities.
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These numbers matter to Zillow – and the broader housing market - because well-off empty-nesters are proving to be a big pool of buyers for luxury condo developments popping up in Boston and Cambridge. Developers of these sort of projects say their best customers are people selling their suburban homes after the kids move out and buying a pad in the city - closer to lucrative jobs they still hold at tech, life sciences and finance companies in the core of Greater Boston.
If that continues, with all the condo projects in the pipeline, there may be more affluent Boomers in Cambridge and Boston the next time Zillow counts these things.
Tim Logan can be reached at timothy.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.