Boomers holding on to homes
Estate Planning | Home Downsizing | Home Ownership | February 14, 2024
This Week's Quote:
"All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them"
- Walt Disney
Boomer bashing is “in” and has been for several years, so don’t be surprised if younger people start blaming us for the housing shortage, or at least part of it.
Not me, though, not yet. For one thing, my wife and I are barely boomers. Born in 1964, we’re on the tail end of the baby boomer generation, 1946-1964. For another, we haven’t owned our house long enough yet, just 23 years.
But that’s going to be the complaint: Boomers tend to own homes longer than most, which keeps the properties off the market.
That’s according to U.S. Money Reserve, a precious-metals investment company, which just released a report, “U.S. Cities Where Retirees Have Been in Their Homes the Longest.”
“As they age into their retirement years, baby boomers have proven reluctant to leave homes where they feel comfortable and where their costs are affordable,” according to the report by financial education specialist Brad Chastain. “The result is that 38% of American homeowners age 65+ have lived in their home for more than 30 years.
Statistics for the United States:
● 38.2%: Share of households 65 years old or older in home 30+ years
● 58.1%: Share of 65 and older households in home 20+ years
● 77.1%: Share of 65 and older households in home 10+ years
● 22.9%: Share of 65 and older households in home less than 10 years
● 32.3%: 65 and older share of owner-occupied households
● 16.8%: 65 and older share of total population and another 39% have lived in their current home for more than a decade. Only about one out of every five retirement age households moved within the last 10 years.”
It turns out that boomers’ desire for aging in place, about which I have written about often, often overcomes the desire to downsize.
In seven years, the Lord willing, I’ll be 66, and if my wife and I haven’t moved, we will have owned our home for 30 years. As a baby boomer staring aging in place in the face, this research speaks to me.
“Unlike previous generations that may have sold homes later in life to downsize, move in with family, or move to an assisted living facility, baby boomers have shown a greater propensity to age in place. And as older Americans hold onto their homes, less existing supply is available for new buyers entering the market.”
Propensity to age in place is one thing. Resources to pay for home modifications are something else. Boomers downsizing to pull out equity from a home for money to live on, if they have any equity, is yet another thing, and a hard reality for some.
Credit given to Richard Mize, The Oklahoman, published in USA Today June 2, 2023.
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This Week’s Author, Mark Bradstreet