11mo ago

Boomers won’t part with their homes, and that’s a problem for young families

www.cnn.com Boomers won’t part with their homes, and that’s a problem for young families | CNN Business

Buying a family-sized home with three or more bedrooms used to be manageable for young people with children. But with home prices climbing faster than wages, mortgage rates still close to 23-year highs and a shortage of homes nationwide, many Millennials with kids can’t afford it. And Gen Z adults w...

Meanwhile, Baby Boomers are staying in their larger homes for longer, preferring to age in place and stay active in a neighborhood that’s familiar to them. And even if they sold, where would they go? There is a shortage of smaller homes in those neighborhoods.

As a result, empty-nest Baby Boomers own 28% of large homes — and Milliennials with kids own just 14%, according to a Redfin analysis released Tuesday. Gen Z families own just 0.3% of homes with three bedrooms or more.

250 comments

They trying to distract us. I aint looking at the single home owning boomers, its landlords and corporate real estate companies hoarding homes.
- Absolutely, it isn't those boomer parents living in a house for 40 years that are driving up the costs. It's corporations and landlords buying houses as investments so that they can rent them out while the market skyrockets.
- Yeah this needs more of an upvote, take a THIS
- Mostly, you're right, IMO. But these same people will vote against affordable housing being built near them... "Not in my backyard!"
- Right? Modern medicine is keeping people alive longer, and I'm not going to judge someone for wanting to keep the home they've probably lived in for many years.
  I don't rent, but from what I read it's out of control, and corporations buying up homes, putting in the bare minimum to fix up (read: lazy/cheap contractors) and asking way more than it's worth. Now, of course you don't have to pay it, but if everyone is asking overprice, what are people suppose to do?

This post is a load of horse shit.
The reason housing prices are out of control is because investment firms are gobbling them up with cash, yet you’re blaming it on boomers staying in their homes.
Boomers are staying in their homes BECAUSE the housing market is out of control. Stop blaming older people and start blaming Wall Street.
- Exactly. Where will they move to? Most older people want to stay in the neighborhood that they grew up in. It's not like an 80 year old will be selling their house in suburban Long Island to find a cheap room in rural Alaska.
  
  And it’s not like new houses haven’t been built since grandpa bought his house.
  And it’s not like there isn’t people benefitting now on a housing shortage caused by Airbnb buying up all that new housing.
  Blaming boomers for corrupt Airbnb for this is a desperate reach.
  
  This point is literally in the article, almost word for word, and it's being upvoted as a defense of them against this article that's allegedly trying to blame them.
  Fucking hell, it never ceases to amaze me that people will be so up in arms against something they didn't even bother to read.
- Also blame shit like Silicon Valley for coming up with these new things like Airbnb and not putting it through a proper checkpoint on how it impacts the world. Like surely that could have had some foresight on the housing shortage it was going to cost the moment people got dollar signs in their eyes.

Idgaf about the boomers who want to grow old in the homes they bought. Thats their right as a homeowner. I care about the airbnbs, unskilled flippers, and the corps trying to turn America into a "renters market"
- Exactly. My parents are boomers and own one house. But my sister and her son live with them, so they are utilizing their space.
  It's the corporations that own several rentals, complexes, etc that drive rent and house prices up. Can't compete with their practices .
  
  I read the disaster insurance in some states are so outrageous or even unobtainable, so private citizens can’t even get a mortgage (no insurance, no loan) anymore-assuming they could afford one to begin with. The only ones who can afford to outright buy in some places are corporations and foreign interests. It’s fucking trash.
- There are so many “boomer bad”, “genx vs millenniall”, “zoomers are lazy” stories lately. Seems like they got tired of just pitting races against each other and moved onto fake generational conflict. This way we don’t notice what the billionaires are doing to all of us. Meanwhile the 5 richest billionaires doubled their net worth.
  
  GenX here. I'm shocked someone remembered us. We're not even mentioned in the synopsis
- This. it’s ok to own a home. It’s ok to rent a home. people need places to live.
  What’s not ok is being a slumlord.
- yeah kinda feels like the corporations trying to push a bogeyman to distract us.
  
  No, just a writer with nothing to write about. This article is seriously summed up as "omg people are choosing to live in the homes they bought, wtf??!"
- These fuckers too - price hiking people out of rentals is a policy. The encourage evictions instead of negotiation. it's fucked.
  https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-apartment-rent-price-setting-landlords-realpage-lawsuit-illegal-2023-11

As usual, no mention of Gen X.
- the ninja generation
  listen close, theyre around here somewhere..
- You know, I hate the joke, but it seems to have a special place in their heart...
  How do you know someone is Gen X? Well, you don't really care, but they'll tell you anyways.
  
  My dad was trying to tell me he was a millennial the other day. I tell him "no, you're not", he says he's definitely too young to be a boomer and lists off the boomer birth range.
  I just stared at him for a second, before reminding him Gen X exists and he's part of it
  Even Gen X forgets there's a Gen X
  
  They are all vegan?
- Why? They got their house when they were still affordable and there wasn't a shortage. During their time, they could negotiate prices down. They're not the ones being affected by the boomers.
  
  They’re not the ones being affected by the boomers.
  My dude, they've been riding us our whole lives
  
  No I’m…doesn’t!
  Seriously, plenty of us missed the window
- At this point I think gen x is getting conflated with boomers because what people often mean when they say "boomer" is old people. And let's face it, you Xers aren't exactly spring chickens.
  
  Bok bok. Please continue to ignore us.
- Whatever.
  
  meh
- We are definitely the forgotten generation!
- They were mentioned at least once
  
  Gen Xers were 42 to 57
  And then.. crickets.

Sadly, many can’t move. Retirement homes/communities are sometimes more expensive. Smaller homes cost more or have HOA fees they can’t make work. Most all options have taxes they also can’t make work.
I wish it were as easy as telling them to move but it’s not.
- A few years ago my grandparents were in a memory care facility as their health declined. It cost them $18,000 a month to stay there. Adjusting for inflation that's like $22,000 a month.
  
  memory care facility
  I'm assuming a large part of that was the full time nursing care to keep Gran's from wandering off into the street looking for Pinkie, their childhood cat in the middle of rush hour (as well as dealing with... you know... making sure they get meds and, eating right, and wiping their ass after, they, uh, ate right.)
- Smaller homes cost more or have HOA fees they can’t make work. Most all options have taxes they also can’t make work.
  It's pretty insane that America has virtually no supply of inexpensive small homes. It's all about the 2500+ sq-ft behemoths that cost $400,000+.
  Even though it's a "worse" deal per sqft I think the market for sub $200,000 homes in the 500-750 sq-ft range would be absolutely booming if it existed.
  
  I know a real estate developer type. (kinda a moron, actually, but he's got a lot of experience in building expensive places to live.)
  A comment he made to me once was "Nobody builds low-income housing. a mid-rise luxury condo will only cost a bit more to build than low income apartments, but you make a shitload more"
  yeah, he was also kind of an asshole.
  
  Missing middle housing would be an even better solution (duplexes, quadraplexes, row houses, and small apartment buildings). Single family houses are an incredibly inefficient use of space and naturally cause greater sprawl, which means more cars and more roads (and consequently more emissions).
- Also, even if it were that easy, it's kind of hard to expect someone to leave their home for the greater good. Looking at it from the perspective of society at large it makes logical sense and frames the empty nester as selfish, but when it comes down to the individuals it's kind of hard to blame them, it's their home and they love it and they chose it, why should they choose something else?
  In general, large scale, difficult, costly changes done for social good are hard to get off the ground when they rely on large numbers of people choosing to make them and solely for the social good without any other natural motivations.

Really tired of big news companies blaming individuals for industries ruined by the greedy elite, if I can't afford to buy a house, then they can't afford to move houses. My parents wouldn't have a shot in the dark affording a new house.
- Sell your 1 million dollar house that you own and pay $6000 on taxes for just to land back on the market and realize that you can afford a small condo for that and a jumbo loan 😜.

Boomers shouldn't have to part with their homes. They, too, need a place to live.
The issue is not Boomers owning the house they live in and refusing to leave it (even if it might be larger than they require) The issue is in particularly large corporations owning thousands of properties and taking them away from the housing market.
- We should tear them from their homes and send them back where they came from.

This is a fucking bullshit article. Between Airbnb and filthy scum investment companies buying up homes to rent, actual owners are nowhere near the biggest problem
Stop upvoting shit like this. CNN = Clearly Not News
- In support of your argument.
  Report: 44% of all Single-Family Home Purchases were from Private Investors in 2023
  edit: see corrections below
  
  If you click through to the Business Insider article you can see that it's a misquote. Private investors accounted for 44% of the flips in 2023, not 44% of all single family home purchases total. That's still a problem, but it's a huuuuuge difference. Flips are a small minority of home sales.
  
  Fucking hell that's shocking
- Not only are corporations buying up houses to rent, they're actively preventing new houses for purchase from being built through "build to rent" schemes. They use the already scarce construction resources and divert them to building housing with the sole intention of renting them out.
  So they're keeping the supply houses available to own down, and then preventing new supply from being created. It's a giant fuck you from corporations and shitty local government for letting it happen.

Article makes it sound like an old people problem. It isn't. It's a systemic one. People can't afford houses.
- And they want the old people to just leave their homes when their kids move out? As if there aren't tons of other reasons to stay in your home.
  It's a weird article that's trying to put generations against each other.
  
  Not that weird. The corporate media has been pushing this narrative for a while. They realize that younger people don't respond to the old racism or anti-lgbtq. But "evil old boomers are stealing your house/money/whatever" seems to work like a charm. It's just another distraction.
- You don't understand. You must be angry at old people, not rich people or companies.
  
  Well, try to build high density housing near them and see what happens.
- my older in-laws are hoarding all the wealth after grandmother passed and they finagled their way into the inheritance they were not in and inherited the vehicles as well
  now we have ask them for anything if we get in a bad way and my side of the family did something similar
  older people do be hoarding
- with home prices climbing faster than wages, mortgage rates still close to 23-year highs and a shortage of homes nationwide, many Millennials with kids can’t afford it. There is a shortage of smaller homes in those neighborhoods.
  The article mentions both cost and availability as factors.

"Shortage of homes" created by a parasitic class of people and corporations who gobble up all the available homes

Truts me a single individual owning a home is not a problem and it isn't what is causing housing insecurity.
It's corporations that own thousands even millions of homes
- Similar in principle to carbon emissions: yeah, people individually have a carbon footprint, but corporations and industrial activities dwarf that.

Well gee it's almost like after decades of being told they should treat houses as investments to be collected instead of sold, they listened.
The problem isn't boomers. It's people buying more than they need during a crisis.
Don't let them make you forget that 44 percent of homes were bought by corporations in 2023. In cash, above asking, no inspection.
- I agree with most of what you said but that 44% number is wildly wrong. Article about it
  Also, anecdotally, I’ve gone through a couple of houses in hot markets the last 5 years (had to move for work) as both buyer and seller. The vast majority of people looking weren’t corporate or institutions. Most were couples looking for a place to live. Cash buyers are a real thing though and they suuuuuuuck for the poors like myself.
  
  Your right, I shouldn't take my news from Medium headlines. So here's the actual study results from Business Insider.
  However the Medium article wasn't wrong. When you have reporting from NYT to CNBC agreeing, and a glorified industry blog splitting hairs as a defense then it's pretty clear what the situation is.

I love this community, seeing through the generational conflict bullshit.
Makes me wonder if the corporate propaganda networks are going to be in trouble because this seems to be one actual generational trend: younger generations don't seem to trust the media like older ones did.
I've seen CNN as basically Fox News but with a different target audience for over a decade now. They can't say as much stupid shit because that audience isn't as dumb as Fox's, but it's pushing the same divide and conquer shit.
- CNN got bought by some other Republican asshole, I forget the name. They are basically FOX News now without actually using the N word.
- I like Scripps News

I’m shocked! Is this yet another article that tries to blame the average American for the housing market problems instead of residential real estate “investors” buying up all the properties to rent or use as airbnbs?
Or what about the foreign investors who are buying up land and homes with what seems to be zero oversight?
But obviously it’s the boomers who just want to live in the house they bought.
- Also, y'know just the overall lack of houses. It's not all greedy investors
  
  https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/ 10% of homes in 2022 in the US were empty
- It's the scapegoat to try and avoid the legislation that needs to happen to put a stop to this bullshit.

Corporate propaganda.
Obviously fuck boomers.
But we can't afford housing because of corporations. Not other people.
In general when other people are being blamed for your problems, it's corporate propaganda. They don't want us working together.
- Funny how corporate strategy of encouraging us to squabble with each other is the same as the predominant political strategy.
  
  What's funny is that some people still think there's a meaningful difference between government and business.
- Why fuck boomers? Hating a whole generation seems a little extreme

I'm all for blaming boomers, but what about the corporations and foreign entities buying up single family homes?
- You can't blame corporations. Lobbyists passed a law against that.
- but what about the corporations and foreign entities buying up single family homes?
  Fuck them too. Well. lets fuck them first, and then see if that helps. we can hold boomers in the wings.
  Actually, who do you think sits on the boards of those hedge funds (blackrock comes to mind,)? it ain't gen z. or millenials. So, yeah. we can still blame boomers.... :)

“Old people to blame for not selling their houses or dying sooner!"
Seriously, WTF? It's my house. The entitlement of some people...

How bout, now hear me out, we build more and better housing. I'm not throwing Grandma and Grandpa to the curb I'm overthrowing Capitalism first
- How ya doing that
  
  weeps for he does not know and is hopeless
  
  One of the big challenges to overcome is update zoning laws. The US relies heavily on outdated Euclidian zoning and it's the root cause of most of the construction trends. We need middle housing but everyone is building five over one multi-family luxury housing.
- At least where I live, new housing costs exceed the value of the built building, so new costruction isn’t viable.
  
  There is a reason housing needs have historically been met by public investment without expectation of market investment.
- Building more wont do anything for people that actually want to buy a home. Building more just increases the rental supply for landlords and corporations. There are enough homes built. Nobody is homeless waiting for a house to be built. The current supply needs to be redistributed.
  
  There are enough homes built
  Every study I've seen says otherwise, you might want to back up your opinion.
  https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/12/30/the-economics-of-the-housing-shortage/
  
  The United States is short some 5 million houses.
  There are plenty of people who want to buy a house but it's too expensive and there's not enough houses for sale.
  Housing follows supply and demand. A high price is a market signal to build more

We just need more of them, not some random group to get fucked out of their housing. Bleed the 1%
- Not sure how more boomers would help..

Boomers should have housing. And we shouldn’t ignore the idiosyncratic attachments that people develop to their homes. Saying “the boomers need to move so I can have a home” is no different than saying “that people group needs to move so my people group has living space.”
We can all have homes. The problem is that the corporations are incentivized to buy residential property and rent it to us. Fuck them.
- Around me there are strata neighborhoods (HOA) with 3 bedroom houses with restrictions saying you have to be 55+ years of age to live there. There's no reason other than it makes the housing cheap to purchase for older folks. Younger folk get screwed yet again. There's no reason a 3+ bedroom house should be reserved for older people.
  I could understand it if there were handicap accessible bathrooms and whatnot but they are just regular homes. Also many luxury condos with the same restrictions.
- And many cities make it illegal to build smaller housing units in the areas that older people who own the larger houses live.
- There is no limit to the amount of housing we can build. Investment in housing is good for everyone.
  
  Investing in new construction and 'investing' in hoarding existing real estate are not the same thing.

Media doing everything they can to keep people fighting each other rather than the owner class...
- Damn, reading these comments it's pretty much working.
  
  We love to have some nebulous evil "other" group to blame. The only interesting thing is this time instead of skin color or sexual orientation, the target is our own (grand-)parents. Wouldn't have thought that would work as "others".

Ok so we’re trying to blame boomers now for Airbnb now? Cuz there’s more than enough NEW housing that was turned into Airbnb by gobbling firms.
Brian Joseph Chesky (born August 29, 1981) is an American businessman and industrial designer and the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. Chesky is the 249th richest person in the world according to Forbes, with a net worth of $8.6 billion, mostly due to his ownership of 76 million shares of Airbnb.
Where did Brian Chesky start Airbnb?
San Francisco Airbnb. In October 2007, the Industrial Designers Society of America was hosting a conference in San Francisco and all hotel rooms were booked. The pair could not afford rent for the month and decided to rent their apartment for money.
You can safely leave the boomers out of that conversation for how the unchecked system was actually broken by a millennial.
- Airbnb impact pales in comparison to SFR and B2R. And guess what generation is driving those industries.
  
  Go away troll.

That’s not the problem.

Nice to gloss over the fact that home mortgage rates were double what they are now when they were buying them. My boomer parents’ rate was 12% for the majority of their 30-year mortgage (and that was considered great!). We’re trying to get them to move out of their 6 bedroom home I grew up in but they have deep roots where they are and aren’t interested in moving anytime soon.
- I’m not a math whiz, but just using an online loan interest calculator, comparing the total cost of the median loan to median salaries for 1990 vs today, that 12% rate still doesn’t make up for the difference in home prices and the stagnating wages young people face today. Seven percent mortgage rate today (which is being generous) compared to 12% yesteryear, at homes that were one quarter of today’s price, with salaries that have grown by barely a third… it just doesn’t add up. I’m not saying your parents are wrong, I’m saying there is something wrong.
  
  That was the entire point of mortgages. You're paying interest, and could end up paying well over the original house value, but over a long enough time period, via inflation and property values increasing, you're still making out ahead of renting. Depending on the mortgage interest rate, you could be better off not paying it off early.
  For example, I refinanced my house at 2.6%. Afterwards I started paying extra principal payments. My mother the accountant told me to stop. The interest rate is lower than inflation, I'm better off using the money for other things or putting it into higher yield savings accounts instead of paying it off earlier than schedule.
  
  I’m not disagreeing. It’s worse now. But it’s not nearly as a gulf as they’re trying to make it sound. Remember, 12% was basically rock bottom and not average. I am curious as to what the difference amortized is, just too tired to find the calculator at the moment.
- Sounds like someone is worried about "their" inheritance.
  
  My wife and I are quite well off and don’t want or need their money or property. I’d be happy if they get to the end and just used up the last cent. They’ve earned it!

Why should they have to move? What is this unwritten law that says after 30 years you're required to sell your family home to someone younger? I get that the baby boomer generation has fucked up a lot, but I don't see why anyone should have to silently pack their belongings and shuffle off to a nursing home just because Junior wants his first big boy house...
- I agree, but it sure would be nice if boomers did something good for once.
  
  They will eventually (though only once). It's one of two certainties in life and the other is taxes.

My parents live in Texas and I live in WA. They say they wish they could afford to live closer to me, but based on their actions it seems like they value having a big piece of real estate more than they value being close to me.
- Or maybe they're happy living where they've lived for so long, in a big comfortable property, rather than uproot everything they've known to live close to you with no guarantee that you'll visit regularly and not move again for another job.
  
  Or maybe I know the situation better than you.
  They haven't lived in their house very long, they have virtually no community connections there, they don't like it much, and it's pretty obvious that I'm not planning another cross country move ever.
  But go off.
- Did they move away from you or did you move away from them?
  
  What difference does that make? I have just as much right to choose where I live as they do to choose where they live.

They can’t sell. Their adult children have to live with them since they can’t afford anything else.

Boomers are not the enemy. Corporations are.
- Who is the main age group fighting against progressive policy of action against corporations? Boomers
  
  They have got you chasing a red herring by being obsessed with the age of people instead of their beliefs. There are reactionary fascists in all age groups, new young generations of fascists are being hatched right as we speak. It isn't the age of the individual which perpetuates it, there are far more wide reaching factors involved.
  
  Pretty much everyone on both sides. Leftists hate action on housing because developers can make some profit providing housing for people

Nobody expects anyone to give up their own home.
- The article wants you to tell grandma to get the fuck out.
  
  I'll just take those "journalists'" houses instead.

And where is it suggested boomers should live? My MIL has a paid-for home, but is now in assisted living. It costs 6K a month, which is eating through her savings at a shocking rate, even though we're paying a portion of her AL rent.
If she had the ability to stay home, you better believe she would, because she can't afford to part with her home.
- I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I'm genuinely curious: your MIL is in expensive assisted living yet still owns a home she's no longer living in? Wouldn't the move here be to sell the home now with housing prices so high, and use the profits from it to fund the assisted living expenses?
  
  Not insensitive at all. It isn't worth a lot as far as selling goes, but it does generate good income as a rental.
  I actually agree with you, but I'm the DIL, and my husband and MIL agreed on renting.

I wrote out a very angry reply, but as often happens, as I cooled down and reflected, it was 100% the result of this enormously clickbait title, not the article itself.
The article itself DOES mention the mortgage rates, and it DOES acknowledge that Boomers might be willing to move out (in direct contradiction to its own title) but cannot bc of a shortage of affordable smaller homes, the same as everyone else.
In short, Boomers are trapped too - again it's not that they "won't" so much as they "can't" - even if sitting better in a home that they (hopefully) own rather than having to rent.
There is simply no excuse for such a rage-baiting, purposefully combative title.:-( Maybe we need to start using AI to generate new titles to replace those profit-mongering ones? :-)
- One of the rules of this community is you must use the same title for your post as the news article title.
  So now we have quite a few clickbait & ragebait titles, because that's what the corps are doing. Pretty dumb rule, IMO.
  
  Rules can change, but mainly I mean that we need to be the change we want to see in the world. e.g. maybe not even allow articles labeled as "news" that are meant only to distract our attention away from corporations' profit margins, being written by conservative right-wing propaganda arms of the media such as [checks notes] "CNN". Well... shit.
- I'm here to say thank you for keeping your cool on the internet despite the clickbait and somewhat ragebait headline.
  This definitely helps make the Fediverse a nicer place.
  
  Thank you for the thanks, and sorry that someone is downvoting you even for saying that much. At this point I think I'll start wearing my downvotes as a matter of pride ~~just like on ole Reddit~~. I would very much like it if the Fediverse would be cleaner and nicer than where we left, so indeed that starts with myself.:-)

It's extra fucked in California because the boomers passed a law to set property taxes at the time of purchase and only allow for small increases over the years. Rising home prices don't have corresponding rising taxes so the old farts are never priced out of their huge empty houses.
- Heaping ever increasing taxes on the elderly doesn't sound ideal either tbh.
  Imagine having to give up your home because your neighbours property value increased and thus your taxes went up due to the increased value of your home. Sure you could sell away your life and move into a smaller building in a different part of the country (or worse, a retirement home), but should we advocate for people to lose their homes when a better solution is for government to build more affordable housing for people?
  
  Imagine giving immortal corporations a property tax based on 1976 prices plus a maximum annual increase of 2% instead of just granting an exception to property taxes for your primary residence. Imagine leaving your grandkids with no money to run a government because you're that fucking dumb and greedy. Fuck the boomers, I hope the PG&E bills to cool their giant homes fucking bury them.
  
  I've moved 8 times in the last 15 years so I can't say I feel too bad about the idea of people "losing" their home by selling it and moving somewhere smaller.

Corporations and foreign countries are buying up real estate like crazy and OP wants to blame retired people? STFU.

Yeah, old people! Get out of your houses! Die in the street for everyone else's benefit!
Just like how you were supposed to die to vote for Trump in the Iowa caucus and die from COVID to help the economy.
The point is, this is entirely your fault and we hate you and go die. In a hole preferably, so we don't have to hear you moan about needing social security and medicare.
Sincerely,
Republicans
(P.S. Vote for us before you die! Kthx.)
- For sure, you know those famous republican rags "CNN." "Indipendent.co.uk" and "Vanity Fair."
  
  Sorry... are you under the absolute bizarre impression that because I linked to two articles that quote what Republicans say, I am saying those two sources are Republican?
  As for CNN... who just hosted a pointless Republican debate?

Not sure how common this is nationally, but around here it's also common for the older generation to maintain two properties a "home" in the city/metro area near their kids or grandkids and a "cabin" which is literally a second home somewhere else.
I think it'd be great to give up the home in the metro and downsize to a condo or apartment, but that's just me.
- Good luck finding a condo. Plus all the fees of moving and taxes.

My 90 year old grandmother refuses to go to a nursing home (and honestly I can’t blame her) and actually just blew a ton of money getting her home remodeled. She has no plans to leave until she passes away, at which point the house will go to my father who has plans to sell it.
Meanwhile, my wife and I barely make the median income amount and, at 36, we’re never going to be able to afford a home.
- And your dad will spend that money like it will never end, leaving you with nothing.
  
  Mhm. He and my mother plan on moving to Alaska with my uncle.

No it's not. Hedge funds and banks and corporations are buying the starter homes. The homes boomers are in are not the starter homes.
This entire line of thinking is a red herring to distract from hedge funds destroying our housing economy.

I bought my first house in 2010, during the last dip in the housing market. Sold every asset I could for the down payment and end up with a mortgage payment I could afford. The value of the home has since increased 3x from when I bought it; I couldn't afford to buy the place today, let alone move someplace else. My major source of frustration has been property taxes, which now cost 1.5x more than my mortgage payment. I'm not entirely certain I'll be able to STAY in this place if they keep going up 20%/year like they have been.
- Somewhat similar here. Bought in 2011, with housing prices still depressed by the 2008 crash. Since then, we've put a good bit of money into the place (it needed work, still does). We also have kids now, so the space is really nice to have. The house now appraises for 2.5-3x what we spent for it, which is not justified by the money we've spent on it and is mostly driven by the market going nuts. While we might be able to swing the mortgage, were we to be buying the place now, it'd be very tight. Also, there's just no incentive to move. The local schools are good. The neighborhood is nice, I work from home (wife doesn't work), so there is no commute. We know and like our neighbors and regularly have neighborhood BBQs in the cul-de-sac.. Sure, when the kids are gone, we might consider a smaller home further out, with more land and less neighbors. But more likely, we're just going to keep putting money and effort into this house and let the kids drag our desiccated corpses out of the place.

I feel like most of the thumbnails I see for news articles are AI generated now.
- This one's real.
  
  Wtf. Some of those houses are ridiculous.

Baby Boomers, Millenials, amd Gen Z account for.. 42% of homes.
Classic Gen X erasure aside... I have doubt Gen X owns the remaining 58% today. The article does mention 18% of gen X owned 10 years ago. And I am doubtful the Silent Generation is still clinging to their numbers.
And so under the most charitable interpretation: that is still a 20% gap of ownership by what I can only assume is a business enterprise.
- This article is cherry picking numbers from a Redfin study. It says 28% empty-nest Boomers vs 14% Millennials with kids. Together those two subsets own 42% of large homes (3+ bedrooms). So that doesn't account for elder GenZ, Millennials without kids, all of GenX, and any boomers that don't count as "empty-nest" for whatever reason. It's not half corps like everyone keeps saying.

They trying to distract us. I aint looking at the single home owning boomers, its landlords and corporate real estate companies hoarding homes.

~3000 baby boomers die every day.
Some of them will part with their homes.
- Yeah my husband laughed at me when I said I wanted to move to this neighborhood because when I walked the dog I saw all these truly ancient people mowing their lawns, and figured:
  People like it here enough to stay till they die
  There would be a bunch of houses for sale when those owners died.
  but he sure loves it here now. One day we will be those ancient people.
- Hopefully most of those homes go to their kids so they can actually have a chance at home ownership in this shithole of a world we've built.
  
  🎶I see babies crying… 🎶

Eventually they will

This isn’t the ‘Boomers’ fault. It’s large corporate property portfolios vacuuming up houses and land to take in the lovely extortion… uh…‘rent’ monies.

But it's not a problem for boomers who like having all the stuff and not sharing, so why change it?
What do you mean by "other people"?

What comes after Gen Z? Gen A? Gen Ź? Gen [?
- Currently called gen Alpha
  
  Ok, so going back to the beginning. Interesting choice. I would prefer Gen [. Can we agree to call then Gen [?
- Here's the fun part. It started with X and the definition of who is Generation X keeps changing. Originally, Boomers were Generation X.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X#Terminology_and_etymology

Hmm. In my opinion it's preferable if the boomers keep their houses so their children can inherit the value.
Where I live, it's a bigger issue that boomers sell their houses too cheap to companies that demolish the house to build apartments. The boomers then waste the money on renting overpriced apartments for the rest of their life.
I get that it's difficult to maintain a house as you grow older and these houses are usually not well maintained, but they're really just pissing their value away.
- A bunch of apartments vs. a single-family home is better in terms of offering housing to more people.
  
  We don't have a shortage of houses where I live. We have a shortage of affordable houses. Luxury rental apartments too small for families won't help that. They're basically removing properties and increasing the prices on the market. Instead of being able to pay X amount of money to a mortgage people can now pay the same amount for renting only part of it.

Boomers are the largest private owners of homes, even more than actual corporations that are actively buying and raising housing prices in order to pad their books.
The only way out of this is a financial collapse and that will end up killing millions before the market actually reaches a reasonable price and rate. I don't want this but this seems to be the direction the current macroeconomic conditions are heading.
2024-2028 are going to be some of the most shitty years in human history
- 2024-2028 are going to be some of the most shitty years in human history
  I doubt that. Compare your modern life of general comfort to the lives that human beings lived just 200 years ago. I'd much rather live in 2024 America than 1800s America.
  
  Yes, I'm sure the complete breakdown of government and banking institutions is going to maintain a reality just as good or better than the 1800's.

Gee, boomers are being selfish! Who would have guessed?

Probably because of this young people have stopped respecting boomers. Last week a guy in his 20's assaulted a boomer at our local grocery shop.

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