Boomers won’t part with their homes, and that’s a problem for young families
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 with kids? Even harder.
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.
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.
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.)
Not really, surprisingly. They mostly only needed basic assisted living stuff (meals were provided). Both needed help with their medications, but my grandpa was mostly independent, only requiring help putting on his shoes and taking showers. My grandma was a psycho wannabe escape artist though. But she didn't really need someone to watch her all the time. The building was intentionally designed confusingly to prevent escapes.
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.
Yeah, I completely believe it.
Space-efficient middle housing for the poor and lower middle-class is not something we can rely on private companies to do in America. It's something that is going to have to take government intervention.
The apartment complex I was in took up as much land as around 5-7 average sized new construction homes yet it housed
4246(I actually remember two of the buildings having 8 apartments each) apartments. It was also in a part of the country where a car was basically required. There was space for every apartment to have at least 1 car and have space to spare. Realistically probably about 1.5 cars per apartment could fit parked in the complex.Parking minimums are utter madness, and a big part of the issue in the US. Although I understand that in some states/cities where this isn't required, developers still overbuild the parking just out of the assumption that buyers/renters will prefer it.
Buyers and renters definitely prefer parking. I wouldn't buy or rent a place that didn't have parking. I can't solve the transportation infrastructure problem myself so until there is actually meaningful transit, I need my car, and I need some place to park it.
Yes, but do you need multiple parking spaces for every tenant (who might not have a car), especially given most parking lots are massively underutilized? Even more so when you look at the situation across a neighbourhood or a city where there are likely spaces nearby that could be used.
True.
However I was simple talking about an apartment complex in a relatively rural part of the country without access to public transit. There were about 55-60 parking spaces for 7 buildings of 46 apartments.
Here in the UK it's generally the same, but also in a way worse.
Developers are "required" to build a percentage of homes that are "affordable". I put both of these in quotes because, yeah. They dodge it over and over and somehow are still granted permission for their next project.
A lot of the big developments in minneapolis are supposed to have a certain percentage of the spaces be "affordable", but, if you happen to be one of the largest real estate developers and in the world... and if you happen to own several lobbyists... waivers exist.
He may have been an asshole but that statement isn't what made him one. He's just working with reality.
Making luxury stuff makes more money for him and his whole team. Simple stuff.
If we as society want change, we need to work with the vehicle we have to do so: government.
Set quotas. Offer subsidies to builders. Specify zoning to require x% of undeveloped land earmarked for building to be higher density or lower cost. (Or both.)
The context of that conversation was in a looming housing crisis. This was before the Hiawatha encampment made it much more visible.
In any case I was and am active in the city level politics and I was looking for a rough estimate to price out literally just building new apartments for everyone that needed a home.
Basically he was saying “but nobody does that,” and he’s right. And I wouldn’t expect him to. But, just for the record, from what I found at the time chatting up a few developers…
… it would have cost less than the cities-then budget for dealing with the housing crisis. But people want to be assholes for some reason.
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).
Trust me, I completely agree. I just have very low expectations of the American market and the American consumer. I figured that lots half as wide and half as deep could fit 4 times the number of "tiny" homes in the same area and it might entice many people who want a single family home to something more land efficient rather than a 2500sq-ft place.
I used to live in an apartment complex that had a number of buildings and each building had 6 apartments. I really liked it. One of the best places I ever lived, but unfortunately the management company decided that they need to constantly raise the rent. They ended up forcing a lot of people out.
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.