Booming Hispanic Home Buying Market Is Sold on Spanish  Builders who aren’t actively marketing their homes to Hispanic buyers are missing out on a major opportunity, according to panelists at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla., earlier this month, and translating sales materials into Spanish is a good place to start. There are already 40 million Hispanic households in the U.S. and Hispanics are growing at four times the rate of the general population, said Tim Coughlin, director of marketing in Boston for translations.com, which relies on Spanish translation for about 30% of its business. Coughlin said that Hispanics will have $778 billion in purchasing power this year, and that is expected to grow three times faster than the rate of inflation to more than $1 trillion by 2008. Hispanic households are younger and larger than the general population; 79% speak Spanish at home; they spend 9% more time online; and they are four times more likely to make a purchase when they are dealing in their preferred language, he said. “Hispanics are loyal to the American way of life they are pursuing, but they still want to persist in their ethnic traditions and feel connected to their culture,” said Marilyn Gardner, corporate vice president for sales and marketing in Atlanta for Beazer Homes USA. | 
