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Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

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Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#21

Post by pxeboot »

mythrwy wrote: post #13

Speculation and free markets are great and all and there is a time and a place for those and it allocates capital more efficiently than central planning (from what we have seen so far) and freedom to attain wealth is a beautiful thing. That being said, there are basic human needs that should be met by any civilization of note. And if a civilization doesn't then it is failing. These needs include the the opportunity t…

Housing is still ridiculously cheap in much of the US. Should everybody have the right to live in the trendiest city?

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#22

Post by spaceflunky »

rabboRubble wrote: post #20

Once the babyboomers start selling for retirement home cash, or dying, many property bubbles will be popping.

You're not wrong, but don't hold your breath.

The average age of the boomers is an spry 67 with a life expectancy of ~85.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#23

Post by kevinburke »

I'm going to sound like a broken record here but there are policy and other decisions being made in the Bay Area that are restricting the housing supply and driving up the price of existing housing. You don't have to be a bystander in this process, you can help lobby for more supply.

A list of propositions and legislation to support (SF, Brisbane, Mountain View, the CA state legislature) can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14195301

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#24

Post by randomdata »

spaceflunky wrote: post #22
rabboRubble wrote: post #20

Once the babyboomers start selling for retirement home cash, or dying, many property bubbles will be popping.

You're not wrong, but don't hold your breath. The average age of the boomers is an spry 67 with a life expectancy of ~85.

67 seems a tad high, no? Babyboomers are generally considered to be those born from 1946-1964. If we assume an even distribution of people born through those years, the average would be 62. However, births per year were higher towards the end of the boom, so in fact I would expect the average age to be even lower.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#25

Post by John_Cena »

pxeboot wrote: post #21
mythrwy wrote: post #13

Speculation and free markets are great and all and there is a time and a place for those and it allocates capital more efficiently than central planning (from what we have seen so far) and freedom to attain wealth is a beautiful thing. That being said, there are basic human needs that should be met by any civilization of note. And if a civilization doesn't then it is failing. These needs include the the opportunity t…

Housing is still ridiculously cheap in much of the US. Should everybody have the right to live in the trendiest city?

No, but I believe you should be able to live where you can find work. I'm frightened about getting a job in CA due to the housing market.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#26

Post by manyxcxi »

mythrwy wrote: post #13

Speculation and free markets are great and all and there is a time and a place for those and it allocates capital more efficiently than central planning (from what we have seen so far) and freedom to attain wealth is a beautiful thing. That being said, there are basic human needs that should be met by any civilization of note. And if a civilization doesn't then it is failing. These needs include the the opportunity t…

I wholeheartedly disagree that land in the US is anyone's birthright, with the exception of people of native descent, and they (painting with a VERY wide brush stroke, I know) generally didn't believe in land ownership to begin with.

I do agree that speculation has driven to some crazy things in the US housing market. Though I'm not against speculation in any market per se, when we see what banks, businesses, and otherwise shady actors were/are doing to manipulate things in their favor when we're talking about something as important as housing, it gets quite frustrating.

I say this as a guy who had absolutely no issues with purchasing my own home a year ago in a hot market (Portland, OR), moving from another hot market (Seattle). I've got no sour grapes, I got the house I wanted and never had to worry about where I was going to live with my family if the house I was renting would be sold to someone else and the rent skyrocketed. But I have seen first hand the real nightmare that the rapid turnover of properties does to the people that ACTUALLY live in them when the owners treat the property as a line item rather than someone's house.

It's a double edged sword: tighten financing rules and regulation and you make it hard for people to 'move up'. Make them overly loose and you get 2008 all over again. Then again, maybe if it was harder to get jumbo mortgages it would apply a pressure against unfettered growth of housing prices, reducing the expected outcomes from speculation. Or it'll just create some other unintended consequence...

Side note: Having your 9 month pregnant wife watch The Big Short while going through the mortgage process and being one of 11-15 offers on the first few houses you looked at is a really stupid idea. So. Many. Tears.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#27

Post by jmclnx »

Not really the Baby Boomers fault, but bad decisions made over the past 30/40 years are coming to fruit. Right now only a hand full of cities have 'real' jobs and those cities have strict zoning laws (and NIMBY). So young people in the US, if they want to make any real $ need to move to those cities, otherwise all they will have are 'mcjobs'. I would not be surprised to see slums like the type seen in many poor countries start to occur near these cities in 20 or so years.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#28

Post by flashman »

BrentOzar wrote: post #2

The flip side of this is that as the baby boomers pass, there's going to be a glut of retirement home communities available - and with my generation probably never being able to retire, that's going to be an interesting market.

Retirement home corporations are going to end up holding huge real estate portfolios because they'll take boomer houses in exchange for aged and end-of-life care.

Wealth concentrates, virtually without exception.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#29

Post by zeckalpha »

misnamed wrote: post #18

You know the same headline could be written in reverse and still work. Of course, it would get fewer votes and clicks. The actual bottom line is they are going for the same size of home ... surely that's not either generation's fault.

People have not made as much of a claim that "boomers are no longer buying homes and it could cause another housing crash". There's been quite a bit of press of "millennial are not buying homes and it could cause another housing crash".

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#30

Post by humanrebar »

jmclnx wrote: post #27

Not really the Baby Boomers fault, but bad decisions made over the past 30/40 years are coming to fruit. Right now only a hand full of cities have 'real' jobs and those cities have strict zoning laws (and NIMBY). So young people in the US, if they want to make any real $ need to move to those cities, otherwise all they will have are 'mcjobs'. I would not be surprised to see slums like the type seen in many poor count…

> Not really the Baby Boomers fault...

Eh... when the housing market corrected in 2008, it could have settled at a lower baseline but it was politically urgent to make sure that baby boomers could still on their houses as profitable investments.

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