Posted on 01/23/2024 5:03:10 AM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
Baby boomers now own twice as many large homes as millennials with kids, Redfin reported.
Boomers don't have much financial incentive to downsize as millennials struggle to buy.
Land-use, tax, and other policies need to change, and many more homes need to be built, experts say.
Baby boomers whose kids don't live with them anymore are clinging to their large homes, making things worse for millennial families looking to settle down, according to a new Redfin analysis.
Empty-nest boomers now own 28% of homes in the US with three or more bedrooms — double the 14% that millennials with kids own, according to Redfin's analysis of 2022 Census data. There's no city in the country where millennial families own a larger share of big homes than boomers do. It's just more evidence of the massive advantage boomers have over millennials in the housing market, as prices have soared, mortgage rates remain high, and a shortage of homes persists.
Many boomers bought their large homes decades ago when they were much more affordable, even trading up for bigger houses later, said Jenny Schuetz, a housing policy expert at the Brookings Institution.
More than half of boomer homeowners don't have a mortgage.....
"They have no financial incentive to move," Schuetz said. "They're consuming a lot more house than they really need, but it doesn't cost them very much.".....
Staying in a large home as an aging empty nester isn't just a misallocation of the housing supply,
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I definitely agree with your last statement.
That being said, I’ve lived in my present ‘large’ house for 27 years. It is convenient to shopping, hospitals and the Interstate while being in a quiet residential neighbor with big lots and mature trees. The neighborhood has been turning over recently as older people die or downsize and we’ve been lucky that the new residents have all been young working couples with a couple of kids (The joke is, based on fact, that they are all Catholic, German-American engineers with two kids). They take good care of the properties and are friendly. I see no reason to leave my home for an assisted living apartment. I’m 72 and still cut my grass, maintain my pool and do most of the little fix up things inside. I don’t want to walk unless I’m walking my dog, I drive. And I even go downstairs to the basement to exercise because that is where my home gym equipment is located.
My late wife and I built our first house when we were 28 y/o. Prior to that we lived in an apartment for 6 years while WE paid off our student loans. I’ve worked hard all my life so I could retire comfortably, and part of that is to have a nice house in a nice neighborhood with no mortgage. Mission accomplished. I feel sorry for younger kids today trying to have what I’ve had, but don’t blame me, blame the democrat government you all vote for because they’ll allow you to keep killing your babies and will fight climate change. Elections and lifestyles have consequences. In real life everybody doesn’t get a trophy. Those that work hard, save and plan get trophies. Those that don’t ask the government to punish the ones who do to make things fair.
I’d be really happy if the Marxist social planners would just butt out of my life. If I decide I want to downsize I will on my terms, but I think it’s illustrative that their thoughts went immediately to higher taxes to force me out. Somethings never change.
Millennials, Harry and Meghan, are whining over having to downsize from 14 bedrooms to their current 9 bedroom, 16 bath, 18,000 sq ft shack because King Daddy isn’t footing the bills anymore. They’ve had to move her mother in with them due to “rough times” and are forced to share the only office. If only Daddy would move out of his house and disown that other brother so they can finally live as they were meant to.
My tiny violin wore out.
The Royals need to do their part to save the planet—circular firing squad.
They use more carbon than many small African countries—and then lecture us about “climate change”.
Misallocation? I don't remember my house being "allocated" to me in the first place. They must mean it in the same manner as a government "buy-back" of weapons ... how can they "buy-back" something that they never owned in the first place?
Think like a leftist.
The collective “we” owns everything.
“They” allocate it.
You are a farm animal.
:-)
The authors will be way back in that line after the million or so criminal illegal aliens get first dibs.
Why would they want to move?
My first house was a 2 bedroom beater. Heat was a floor furnace in the main room. AC was a single swamp cooler. One winter day, my washer leaked out in the garage. I had frozen soapy water all over my garage floor.
Fun times.
“””It keeps a lot of homes better suited to families locked up with seniors who don’t need them.””””
When we were a more American society we knew about the tragedy of seniors in La Jolla who had picked out the ocean-view lots and built their homes in the 40s and 50s but were being driven out by high property taxes as the world moved in on them and made their homes very expensive.
I knew a lot of those seniors who could not afford the taxes on what were now multi-million dollar homes, we passed Prop 13 in 1978 to end some of the worst of the left’s abuses.
That’s why they named it “Dominion.”
We have the dueling tragedies of people with 6 figure salaries but can’t afford a home to raise kids in versus people bought homes when prices were cheap but can’t afford to take the profit on selling them. Policy decisions are hard, but they shouldn’t be based on sentimentality.
If someone can’t keep their home because the value went up too much and the taxes are high, then they should sell and take the windfall profit. I don’t have nearly as much sympathy for them as for people who cannot afford to buy a home to begin with.
On the other hand, society needs people to have kids to survive. In order to have kids, you have to have the space for those kids to grow. When two people living responsibly and making what should be an extraordinary income can’t afford the space to raise kids we got a major problem as a society.
California’s law is broken, and it is warping the real estate market there by locking up millions of properties. It may have been introduced to protect poor people, but it has ultimately benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Real estate prices would arguably be much lower if not for the tax shelter it provides to long term property owners.
“””” Policy decisions are hard, but they shouldn’t be based on sentimentality.””””
Drive people from their homes for the state to apportion them better.
If someone claims they can’t find a cheap enough house for themselves somewhere else in the United States then what good does it do to drive the owners out of their 10 million dollar beach homes, that they originally built for $50,000?
Ha, ha. That is exactly where my wife and I are at. We have a 2500 sqft house. About a year ago we seriously looked at downsizing to a 1600 sqft house (of better quality and location). But.... 1) My wife wants the bedrooms for when the kids come home. 2) Moving is a pain the in the butt. 3) We have too much stuff that we want to keep. We decided to stay planted. We have been getting rid of stuff, but we have a long way to go.
We had neighbors that downsized, but they did it deliberately. They spent a year getting rid of stuff. They actually closed off rooms after they were emptied. Then they downsized. I was talking to the husband a few months ago, he said that he didn't think it was worth it. They could afford the old home so saving money was not an issue. They got rid of stuff that they now want back. Lastly, they have to rent hotel rooms when the kids come to visit (They have a large family.).
On a last note, about five years before my in-laws died I was talking to my mother-in-law and told her that she had a lot of stuff that they needed to get rid of. My mother-in-law smiled and said, "No, that will be your problem."
Never said anything about the state apportioning anything. The market should decide and those people will be well compensated by the market. Quit trying to put words in my mouth. If you want poor people to pay less taxes, then work to reduce the tax rate, not warp the market to hurt young people trying to get in to the advantage of wealthier older people.
When you live in the same home 30, 40. 50 years you accumulate a lot of stuff. I know it took a long time to empty my parents home when the last parent died. I don’t want my children to go through this. So I am constantly throwing out, giving away , donating or selling stuff. It’s a process but it takes a long time. The younger generation generally doesn’t want any of it.
I don’t know what you were saying there, the market will decide what, that people have to surrender their homes or decide what taxes you should pay on your home of 50 years? What was the part about poor people and taxes, this is about the government taxing people’s homes not income taxes. Prop 13 was a result of successful work to end over-taxation resulting in old people having their homes taken, but you want it overturned.
Why should the government be able to tax you out of your home because people start liking your area?
It sounds like you want homes taken and apportioned by government policy.
“The younger generation generally doesn’t want any of it.”
Today, a young friend expressed some alarm at the younger generation’s big spending habit on credit . . . instead of their looking for good old stuff. They are trained to instant gratification by, and near worship of, social media communication chatter.
In places like Florida property tax rates are locked in, if they moved to a new place, their property tax bill would skyrocket.
I need to do the same. We have had some illnesses that had us laid up for a few years and we desperately need to declutter and donate stuff to the Salvation Army.
I don’t like taxes. I think governments should do no more than necessary and keep tax rates low. But I also don’t think that governments should give favorable tax rates to one person over another. There is no reason why two homes next door to each other, with a similar market value should be taxed at vastly different rates. That is unjust and a distortion of the market. It the opposite of government deciding who should live where.
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