Why boomers occupying so many houses?
About 28% of U.S. houses with three or more bedrooms are owned by baby boomers living alone or with another adult, while millennials with children own 14% of such homes, Redfin found in a recent analysis of 2022 census data. https://theweek.com/business/empty-nest-boomers-home-sales-housing-crisis
The Week
Will there be a big increase in inventory in the next few years, as the boomer generation dies off?
If you buy a house now, will you sell the house after your retirement?
Simple answer to this. Doesn’t make sense financially for boomers to sell. Say you bought a house for 300k 30 years ago. Today it’s worth say $3m. Would you sell? Say you put in another $300k over the years. Your cost is $600k. If you sold you’d gross $2.4m. You get $500k free and clear as a married couple. So you’re now owing taxes on $1.9m. If you don’t need the money, you’re not selling. Why would you pay taxes to downsize if you have no use for the money? I know plenty of boomers that have too much house now that their kids are out of the house. But when they sit down to do the math it doesn’t work out. They’re better off living in it.
What if you need the money?
assuming the house is paid off, you reverse finance it
In Soviet Union they would be forced to live with a couple of roommates. Not that bad if you look at the problem from this perspective.
They should be expelled from society now that they are done contributing.
Lmao
Why should boomers have to downsize? I don’t plan to downsize my home after retirement.
When you live in a home for 30+ years you can’t really see yourself moving out of the place you have called home for so long and have so many critical memories. You want to pass on the home to your next generation so they can live and make memories there but if they don’t live here then they can sell and at least use the money to buy their own place. It’s stupid to expect everyone to sell their home just because they are old. Almost never happens even in India
The whole point of buying a house is to build life and memories together, a place you call your own home. It’s not easy to sell it. People here who think of house as an investment will not understand the this point of view.
Thanks to prop 60, anyone 55+ in California can sell their old home and transfer their tax base to their new home. Property tax is not the problem in CA. What someone else already pointed out above, it's the federal taxes on the gain
Depends on what they're looking for. If their kids have moved to some other town like Sacramento or San Diego, then go there. Or if they want to downsize so they don't have to take care of a big house, then from a 3500 sq ft SFH to a 1500 sq ft condo in the same geo area where they currently are or do both (change city and downsize)
Boomers are RICH.