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.
They trying to distract us. I aint looking at the single home owning boomers, its landlords and corporate real estate companies hoarding homes.
Absolutely, it isn't those boomer parents living in a house for 40 years that are driving up the costs. It's corporations and landlords buying houses as investments so that they can rent them out while the market skyrockets.
Yeah this needs more of an upvote, take a THIS
Mostly, you're right, IMO. But these same people will vote against affordable housing being built near them... "Not in my backyard!"
Right? Modern medicine is keeping people alive longer, and I'm not going to judge someone for wanting to keep the home they've probably lived in for many years.
I don't rent, but from what I read it's out of control, and corporations buying up homes, putting in the bare minimum to fix up (read: lazy/cheap contractors) and asking way more than it's worth. Now, of course you don't have to pay it, but if everyone is asking overprice, what are people suppose to do?
This post is a load of horse shit.
The reason housing prices are out of control is because investment firms are gobbling them up with cash, yet you’re blaming it on boomers staying in their homes.
Boomers are staying in their homes BECAUSE the housing market is out of control. Stop blaming older people and start blaming Wall Street.
Exactly. Where will they move to? Most older people want to stay in the neighborhood that they grew up in. It's not like an 80 year old will be selling their house in suburban Long Island to find a cheap room in rural Alaska.
And it’s not like new houses haven’t been built since grandpa bought his house.
And it’s not like there isn’t people benefitting now on a housing shortage caused by Airbnb buying up all that new housing.
Blaming boomers for corrupt Airbnb for this is a desperate reach.
This point is literally in the article, almost word for word, and it's being upvoted as a defense of them against this article that's allegedly trying to blame them.
Fucking hell, it never ceases to amaze me that people will be so up in arms against something they didn't even bother to read.
Also blame shit like Silicon Valley for coming up with these new things like Airbnb and not putting it through a proper checkpoint on how it impacts the world. Like surely that could have had some foresight on the housing shortage it was going to cost the moment people got dollar signs in their eyes.
Idgaf about the boomers who want to grow old in the homes they bought. Thats their right as a homeowner. I care about the airbnbs, unskilled flippers, and the corps trying to turn America into a "renters market"
Exactly. My parents are boomers and own one house. But my sister and her son live with them, so they are utilizing their space.
It's the corporations that own several rentals, complexes, etc that drive rent and house prices up. Can't compete with their practices .
I read the disaster insurance in some states are so outrageous or even unobtainable, so private citizens can’t even get a mortgage (no insurance, no loan) anymore-assuming they could afford one to begin with. The only ones who can afford to outright buy in some places are corporations and foreign interests. It’s fucking trash.
There are so many “boomer bad”, “genx vs millenniall”, “zoomers are lazy” stories lately. Seems like they got tired of just pitting races against each other and moved onto fake generational conflict. This way we don’t notice what the billionaires are doing to all of us. Meanwhile the 5 richest billionaires doubled their net worth.
GenX here. I'm shocked someone remembered us. We're not even mentioned in the synopsis
This. it’s ok to own a home. It’s ok to rent a home. people need places to live.
What’s not ok is being a slumlord.
yeah kinda feels like the corporations trying to push a bogeyman to distract us.
No, just a writer with nothing to write about. This article is seriously summed up as "omg people are choosing to live in the homes they bought, wtf??!"
These fuckers too - price hiking people out of rentals is a policy. The encourage evictions instead of negotiation. it's fucked.
https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-apartment-rent-price-setting-landlords-realpage-lawsuit-illegal-2023-11
As usual, no mention of Gen X.
the ninja generation
listen close, theyre around here somewhere..
You know, I hate the joke, but it seems to have a special place in their heart...
How do you know someone is Gen X? Well, you don't really care, but they'll tell you anyways.
My dad was trying to tell me he was a millennial the other day. I tell him "no, you're not", he says he's definitely too young to be a boomer and lists off the boomer birth range.
I just stared at him for a second, before reminding him Gen X exists and he's part of it
Even Gen X forgets there's a Gen X
They are all vegan?
Found the person who enjoys unoriginal jokes.
Says that very person
Why? They got their house when they were still affordable and there wasn't a shortage. During their time, they could negotiate prices down. They're not the ones being affected by the boomers.
My dude, they've been riding us our whole lives
No I’m…doesn’t!
Seriously, plenty of us missed the window
At this point I think gen x is getting conflated with boomers because what people often mean when they say "boomer" is old people. And let's face it, you Xers aren't exactly spring chickens.
Bok bok. Please continue to ignore us.
Whatever.
meh
We are definitely the forgotten generation!
They were mentioned at least once
And then.. crickets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Really tired of big news companies blaming individuals for industries ruined by the greedy elite, if I can't afford to buy a house, then they can't afford to move houses. My parents wouldn't have a shot in the dark affording a new house.
Sell your 1 million dollar house that you own and pay $6000 on taxes for just to land back on the market and realize that you can afford a small condo for that and a jumbo loan 😜.
Boomers shouldn't have to part with their homes. They, too, need a place to live.
The issue is not Boomers owning the house they live in and refusing to leave it (even if it might be larger than they require) The issue is in particularly large corporations owning thousands of properties and taking them away from the housing market.
We should tear them from their homes and send them back where they came from.
This is a fucking bullshit article. Between Airbnb and filthy scum investment companies buying up homes to rent, actual owners are nowhere near the biggest problem
Stop upvoting shit like this. CNN = Clearly Not News
In support of your argument.
Report: 44% of all Single-Family Home Purchases were from Private Investors in 2023
edit: see corrections below
If you click through to the Business Insider article you can see that it's a misquote. Private investors accounted for 44% of the flips in 2023, not 44% of all single family home purchases total. That's still a problem, but it's a huuuuuge difference. Flips are a small minority of home sales.
Thanks for the correction. I remembered seeing that number but didn't analyze it in any depth. A more detailed analysis of the market, by Freddie Mac, concluded that there were four main drivers for the recent surge in prices, and investors weren't on the list.
Institutional investors apparently even reduced their purchases in 23 - some of them were even net sellers - because of prices and interest rates. That doesn't mean they aren't still villians in this scenario. I don't think big investors should own single family homes at all. But still they aren't as big a force as my previous comment indicated.
Fucking hell that's shocking
It’s not even close to true. Here’s an article about it
Not only are corporations buying up houses to rent, they're actively preventing new houses for purchase from being built through "build to rent" schemes. They use the already scarce construction resources and divert them to building housing with the sole intention of renting them out.
So they're keeping the supply houses available to own down, and then preventing new supply from being created. It's a giant fuck you from corporations and shitty local government for letting it happen.
Article makes it sound like an old people problem. It isn't. It's a systemic one. People can't afford houses.
And they want the old people to just leave their homes when their kids move out? As if there aren't tons of other reasons to stay in your home.
It's a weird article that's trying to put generations against each other.
Not that weird. The corporate media has been pushing this narrative for a while. They realize that younger people don't respond to the old racism or anti-lgbtq. But "evil old boomers are stealing your house/money/whatever" seems to work like a charm. It's just another distraction.
The actual solution is to build more and reject the idea that homes should be a monetary investment (because that requires limited supply, which requires that somebody who needs a home in an area can't get it in order to make demand drive the price up)
It really isn’t the solution.
I would totally agree with you if it weren’t for the fact that there is an abysmal amount of vacant homes.
Investment companies buy up entire neighborhoods leaving them empty allowing them to jack prices up in the area for rentals.
This has nothing to do with there being not enough homes. The issue is investment companies turning housing into a monopoly.
Building more won’t do shit because investment firms will gobble those up too. New homes are mad expensive too so the only people affording them are rich people or investment firms.
Remove Wall Street from housing and the problem is solved.
Investment companies does make it worse, but they wouldn't be able to cause a crisis if homes were built in such volumes that they can't be investments. They're buying expecting value to go up. Build enough and that can't happen.
Right, we had the same issue before investment companies got big, and before airBnB. They just made it worse and the jump in interest rates made houses suddenly even less affordable
As someone who does have a house, I wanted to start pre-paying my mortgage so that’s not hanging over my head so long. However with interest rates as low as they are, I’m much better off even just dropping but I to a savings account …. Anyhow, my point is that even if I wanted to sell, such as to downsize, that’s a bad deal given interest rates
You don't understand. You must be angry at old people, not rich people or companies.
Well, try to build high density housing near them and see what happens.
"Rich people hate this one simple trick"
my older in-laws are hoarding all the wealth after grandmother passed and they finagled their way into the inheritance they were not in and inherited the vehicles as well
now we have ask them for anything if we get in a bad way and my side of the family did something similar
older people do be hoarding
The article mentions both cost and availability as factors.
"Shortage of homes" created by a parasitic class of people and corporations who gobble up all the available homes
Well gee it's almost like after decades of being told they should treat houses as investments to be collected instead of sold, they listened.
The problem isn't boomers. It's people buying more than they need during a crisis.
Don't let them make you forget that 44 percent of homes were bought by corporations in 2023. In cash, above asking, no inspection.
I agree with most of what you said but that 44% number is wildly wrong. Article about it
Also, anecdotally, I’ve gone through a couple of houses in hot markets the last 5 years (had to move for work) as both buyer and seller. The vast majority of people looking weren’t corporate or institutions. Most were couples looking for a place to live. Cash buyers above asking are a real thing though and they suuuuuuuck for the poors like myself.
Your right, I shouldn't take my news from Medium headlines. So here's the actual study results from Business Insider.
However the Medium article wasn't wrong. When you have reporting from NYT to CNBC agreeing, and a glorified industry blog splitting hairs as a defense then it's pretty clear what the situation is.
“ When combining closings between both larger, private equity and smaller, independent operations, investors accounted for 44% of the purchases of flips during the third quarter”
That figure is talking about only flipped (i.e. remodeled) houses bought in a specific quarter, October 2022. Most people (myself included) can’t afford freshly remodeled homes and brand new cars.
That figure also lumps small landlords together with big investors which really isn’t the same thing in my opinion but some people around here think that all landlords are evil so that’s somewhat subjective I guess.
Institutional investors “purchased 25% of the homes flipped” “as soaring mortgage rates push traditional buyers to the sidelines,”
That still sucks but it’s not 44% of all homes being bought by big corporations throughout 2023.
Here’s a recent Business Insider article that goes in depth on who’s been buying houses over time
Idgaf if they own 10 houses or 10,000. They're hoarding houses and people are being hurt by it. It needs to stop.
So no rental properties at all? You either buy or you’re homeless? That doesn’t sound great to me. Owning is a lot of work, risk and commitment. If anything goes wrong, you better have thousands of dollars ready to dump into getting your roof fixed or your plumbing fixed or whatever. If you decide you want to go to a different school or accept a better job offer in another city, you’re probably gonna lose tens of thousands of dollars to the real estate agents when you sell. It’s not the right choice for a lot of people.
I’ve lived mostly in houses owned by landlords with less than ten properties and they were all pretty cool for the most part. Way better landlords than apartment complexes or property management companies. The biggest annoyance was surprise visits by them early on the weekend to plant flowers/bushes in the front yard, water the tree, replace edging, typical homeowner crap like that. I guess worse than that, a couple of times their situation changed and they decided to move back into the house, so they didn’t renew our lease and we had to move out. That kinda sucked but it’s their house, if they want to live in it and your lease is up, that’s the way contracts go.
All that said, property management companies and large landlords can get fucked. Regardless of housing cost, they’ve always been scumbags to deal with.
We could do market rate non profit apartment buildings. But yeah other than that it needs to go die in a fire. We are living in a crisis of our own making.
Truts me a single individual owning a home is not a problem and it isn't what is causing housing insecurity.
It's corporations that own thousands even millions of homes
Similar in principle to carbon emissions: yeah, people individually have a carbon footprint, but corporations and industrial activities dwarf that.
I love this community, seeing through the generational conflict bullshit.
Makes me wonder if the corporate propaganda networks are going to be in trouble because this seems to be one actual generational trend: younger generations don't seem to trust the media like older ones did.
I've seen CNN as basically Fox News but with a different target audience for over a decade now. They can't say as much stupid shit because that audience isn't as dumb as Fox's, but it's pushing the same divide and conquer shit.
CNN got bought by some other Republican asshole, I forget the name. They are basically FOX News now without actually using the N word.
I like Scripps News
I’m shocked! Is this yet another article that tries to blame the average American for the housing market problems instead of residential real estate “investors” buying up all the properties to rent or use as airbnbs?
Or what about the foreign investors who are buying up land and homes with what seems to be zero oversight?
But obviously it’s the boomers who just want to live in the house they bought.
Also, y'know just the overall lack of houses. It's not all greedy investors
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/ 10% of homes in 2022 in the US were empty
That stat by itself means nothing because
The GOP's constant gigantic tax cuts for the rich are a huge force inflating costs of houses for everyone.
It disproves the idea that there aren't enough homes. When i was homeless person I didnt care where the house was. Second homes of the wealthy are vacant. landlords are part of the problem and are scum.
It's the scapegoat to try and avoid the legislation that needs to happen to put a stop to this bullshit.
I'm all for blaming boomers, but what about the corporations and foreign entities buying up single family homes?
You can't blame corporations. Lobbyists passed a law against that.
Fuck them too. Well. lets fuck them first, and then see if that helps. we can hold boomers in the wings.
Actually, who do you think sits on the boards of those hedge funds (blackrock comes to mind,)? it ain't gen z. or millenials. So, yeah. we can still blame boomers.... :)
Corporate propaganda.
Obviously fuck boomers.
But we can't afford housing because of corporations. Not other people.
In general when other people are being blamed for your problems, it's corporate propaganda. They don't want us working together.
Funny how corporate strategy of encouraging us to squabble with each other is the same as the predominant political strategy.
What's funny is that some people still think there's a meaningful difference between government and business.
Why fuck boomers? Hating a whole generation seems a little extreme
Boomers should have housing. And we shouldn’t ignore the idiosyncratic attachments that people develop to their homes. Saying “the boomers need to move so I can have a home” is no different than saying “that people group needs to move so my people group has living space.”
We can all have homes. The problem is that the corporations are incentivized to buy residential property and rent it to us. Fuck them.
Around me there are strata neighborhoods (HOA) with 3 bedroom houses with restrictions saying you have to be 55+ years of age to live there. There's no reason other than it makes the housing cheap to purchase for older folks. Younger folk get screwed yet again. There's no reason a 3+ bedroom house should be reserved for older people.
I could understand it if there were handicap accessible bathrooms and whatnot but they are just regular homes. Also many luxury condos with the same restrictions.
And many cities make it illegal to build smaller housing units in the areas that older people who own the larger houses live.
There is no limit to the amount of housing we can build. Investment in housing is good for everyone.
Investing in new construction and 'investing' in hoarding existing real estate are not the same thing.
Almost no one builds their own house.
How bout, now hear me out, we build more and better housing. I'm not throwing Grandma and Grandpa to the curb I'm overthrowing Capitalism first
How ya doing that
weeps for he does not know and is hopeless
One of the big challenges to overcome is update zoning laws. The US relies heavily on outdated Euclidian zoning and it's the root cause of most of the construction trends. We need middle housing but everyone is building five over one multi-family luxury housing.
At least where I live, new housing costs exceed the value of the built building, so new costruction isn’t viable.
There is a reason housing needs have historically been met by public investment without expectation of market investment.
Building more wont do anything for people that actually want to buy a home. Building more just increases the rental supply for landlords and corporations. There are enough homes built. Nobody is homeless waiting for a house to be built. The current supply needs to be redistributed.
Every study I've seen says otherwise, you might want to back up your opinion.
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/12/30/the-economics-of-the-housing-shortage/
Not just that, but because of outdated Euclidian zoning we are building the wrong stuff. It's lucrative for developers to only build 5 over 1 luxury multifamily.
The United States is short some 5 million houses.
There are plenty of people who want to buy a house but it's too expensive and there's not enough houses for sale.
Housing follows supply and demand. A high price is a market signal to build more
“Old people to blame for not selling their houses or dying sooner!"
Seriously, WTF? It's my house. The entitlement of some people...
We just need more of them, not some random group to get fucked out of their housing. Bleed the 1%
Not sure how more boomers would help..
Ok so we’re trying to blame boomers now for Airbnb now? Cuz there’s more than enough NEW housing that was turned into Airbnb by gobbling firms.
You can safely leave the boomers out of that conversation for how the unchecked system was actually broken by a millennial.
Airbnb impact pales in comparison to SFR and B2R. And guess what generation is driving those industries.
Go away troll.
Media doing everything they can to keep people fighting each other rather than the owner class...
Damn, reading these comments it's pretty much working.
We love to have some nebulous evil "other" group to blame. The only interesting thing is this time instead of skin color or sexual orientation, the target is our own (grand-)parents. Wouldn't have thought that would work as "others".
Do you have a selfish nana who’s hoarding a house?
That’s not the problem.
Nice to gloss over the fact that home mortgage rates were double what they are now when they were buying them. My boomer parents’ rate was 12% for the majority of their 30-year mortgage (and that was considered great!). We’re trying to get them to move out of their 6 bedroom home I grew up in but they have deep roots where they are and aren’t interested in moving anytime soon.
I’m not a math whiz, but just using an online loan interest calculator, comparing the total cost of the median loan to median salaries for 1990 vs today, that 12% rate still doesn’t make up for the difference in home prices and the stagnating wages young people face today. Seven percent mortgage rate today (which is being generous) compared to 12% yesteryear, at homes that were one quarter of today’s price, with salaries that have grown by barely a third… it just doesn’t add up. I’m not saying your parents are wrong, I’m saying there is something wrong.
That was the entire point of mortgages. You're paying interest, and could end up paying well over the original house value, but over a long enough time period, via inflation and property values increasing, you're still making out ahead of renting. Depending on the mortgage interest rate, you could be better off not paying it off early.
For example, I refinanced my house at 2.6%. Afterwards I started paying extra principal payments. My mother the accountant told me to stop. The interest rate is lower than inflation, I'm better off using the money for other things or putting it into higher yield savings accounts instead of paying it off earlier than schedule.
That’s a fair point, if you’re among those who don’t wait the length of time for an entire generation to come of age and two thirds of your loan period to pass before you get to see lower interest rates. Between the late 70s and early 80s there was a steep rise in mortgage rates, but this quickly dropped off and returned to early 1970s rates. Rates stayed mostly constant from then until the 2000s when they began to drop off, reaching a near once-in-a-lifetime historic low just a few years ago.
Wages haven’t risen with inflation to allow others to reap the benefits of buying in and waiting for their property values to soar. And the topic in this particular thread isn’t renting vs buying. The original commenter stated that the article didn’t consider their parents’ 12% mortgage rate. This specific discussion is about whether holding onto a 12% loan for thirty years at a starting 1990 salary is equivalent to today’s rate with today’s prices at today’s salary—and it’s not.
I’m not disagreeing. It’s worse now. But it’s not nearly as a gulf as they’re trying to make it sound. Remember, 12% was basically rock bottom and not average. I am curious as to what the difference amortized is, just too tired to find the calculator at the moment.
That’s not true though. The average 30-year fixed rate in 1990 was a little over 10%.
Why are you assuming it was the 90s?
The age range of millennials, the age of boomers, the idea that a forever long-term home is likely a second or third home purchase, your statement that you grew up in that house and are presumably a millennial. What year are we talking then? Average rates were level ‘85-90 in the 10% range, dropping after that.
I didn’t say I was a millennial. You make a lot of assumptions.
I’d say “some,” not a lot. And I’d also qualify them as reasonable assumptions given the article content and your original comment. But regardless, you agree things are worse now, and to the people who can’t afford homes, being in a situation that’s only a bit worse rather than impossibly worse could be a meaningless distinction. As I said, your parents are not the problem just because they want to stay in their home, but there is a problem.
Oh I’m not disagreeing. I just don’t like it when facts are left out for a narrative.
Sounds like someone is worried about "their" inheritance.
My wife and I are quite well off and don’t want or need their money or property. I’d be happy if they get to the end and just used up the last cent. They’ve earned it!
Why should they have to move? What is this unwritten law that says after 30 years you're required to sell your family home to someone younger? I get that the baby boomer generation has fucked up a lot, but I don't see why anyone should have to silently pack their belongings and shuffle off to a nursing home just because Junior wants his first big boy house...
Boomers are not the enemy. Corporations are.
Who is the main age group fighting against progressive policy of action against corporations? Boomers
They have got you chasing a red herring by being obsessed with the age of people instead of their beliefs. There are reactionary fascists in all age groups, new young generations of fascists are being hatched right as we speak. It isn't the age of the individual which perpetuates it, there are far more wide reaching factors involved.
Pretty much everyone on both sides. Leftists hate action on housing because developers can make some profit providing housing for people
My parents live in Texas and I live in WA. They say they wish they could afford to live closer to me, but based on their actions it seems like they value having a big piece of real estate more than they value being close to me.
Or maybe they're happy living where they've lived for so long, in a big comfortable property, rather than uproot everything they've known to live close to you with no guarantee that you'll visit regularly and not move again for another job.
Or maybe I know the situation better than you.
They haven't lived in their house very long, they have virtually no community connections there, they don't like it much, and it's pretty obvious that I'm not planning another cross country move ever.
But go off.
Did they move away from you or did you move away from them?
What difference does that make? I have just as much right to choose where I live as they do to choose where they live.
They can’t sell. Their adult children have to live with them since they can’t afford anything else.
I wrote out a very angry reply, but as often happens, as I cooled down and reflected, it was 100% the result of this enormously clickbait title, not the article itself.
The article itself DOES mention the mortgage rates, and it DOES acknowledge that Boomers might be willing to move out (in direct contradiction to its own title) but cannot bc of a shortage of affordable smaller homes, the same as everyone else.
In short, Boomers are trapped too - again it's not that they "won't" so much as they "can't" - even if sitting better in a home that they (hopefully) own rather than having to rent.
There is simply no excuse for such a rage-baiting, purposefully combative title.:-( Maybe we need to start using AI to generate new titles to replace those profit-mongering ones? :-)
One of the rules of this community is you must use the same title for your post as the news article title.
So now we have quite a few clickbait & ragebait titles, because that's what the corps are doing. Pretty dumb rule, IMO.
Rules can change, but mainly I mean that we need to be the change we want to see in the world. e.g. maybe not even allow articles labeled as "news" that are meant only to distract our attention away from corporations' profit margins, being written by conservative right-wing propaganda arms of the media such as [checks notes] "CNN". Well... shit.
Yes, some kind of minimum standard would be good.
On piefed.social there are over 3000 domains that cannot be linked to, including all the alt-right propaganda ones. Brietbart, Russia Today, etc. I wouldn't go as far as including CNN in that list though.
To clarify: I was being mostly tongue-in-cheek on that part. Most of the time you do not associate "CNN" with "right-wing propaganda", as while it may not be entirely unbiased it does not lie so far on the spectrum as to deserve that label of "propaganda". Or at least it has not been that way in the past?
The cussing at the end though was to indicate my absolute surprise at finding that this article is now contributing towards its inching closer to earning that distinction though. Or at least the title of this article accomplishes that effect, even though the content itself does not. Also, I noticed that this is not an "opinion" piece, nor at the end do they have a disclaimer that the views of the author may not necessarily reflect that of the journal - so this seems fully supported by the editorial staff at CNN Business?
Fwiw, I wonder if they even care which political direction it pushes people towards - so long as it makes people angry, their profits increase by people clicking on it?
Ofc I agree that CNN Business is not as far advanced along the propaganda spectrum as those others you listed (in those, the content itself would be biased as well)... but neither is CNN Business unbiased either, apparently. Just look at how many incendiary words & phrases are used - they "won't part" (like a toddler holding a toy?), the direct interpretation that "that's a problem", the "think of the children" tactic, not calling them "Generation Baby Boomer" or some such but the almost pejorative these days "Boomers", and using right out of the gate as almost a verb like BOOM those old farts did another thing again, now click to find out why you should be angry!? (which itself, like propaganda tends to do, implies the never-ending NOW that is all that is assumed to ever matter to the reader, not "this is happening lately" or "there is a trend showing up recently", but "[THEY] WON'T PART", as if that stage will continue forever without some inertia-stopping force to stop this "problem for young families" - a force that will demand ACTION? which btw is what drives the urge to click the article, b/c otherwise mere information delivery could allow someone to read the title and move on with their lives, but no, this article must be CLICKED, IMMEDIATELY!) Later, the article itself softens this heavy pushing of phrases considerably - e.g. note the switch inside to now "Baby Boomers", and putting transition words in front of it to shift the focus away from them and more on the nature of the underlying transitioning effect itself (e.g. "Meanwhile, Baby Boomers...", as in a process that is currently underway, over the course of some period of time, rather than the "BOOMERS WON'T PART" in more active, and urgent, voice).
So... from the title alone, it sure looks an awful lot like propaganda to me? I hope to see less of this from CNN Business in the future, but if instead I see more then I will have to update my view on where they stand on that spectrum. Again, at least in reference to their titles as separate from the actual article content.
Thank you for this chance to vent btw, and your perspective does help clarify matters.:-)
Yes, great analysis.
Someone on fedi somewhere recently said "if the article makes you scared or angry, you're probably being manipulated".
It sounds like a fantastic rule of thumb. To be fair, it is REALLY hard to make use of language in a way that engenders zero emotional response on behalf of the recipient - and why would you want to even?
Unfortunately, when that emotional response later turns into disappointment after learning that it was fake, you develop a pattern of distrusting whomever it was that made you feel that way. Which at this point is almost EVERY major corporation, especially the formerly "news" ones?!
e.g., I recall feeling sick upon learning that Donald Trump had sex with a 14-year-old (at the time) girl. Even though I was being, um... "encouraged" to feel that way... I do not regret that emotion, nor distrust who sold me that story, to the extent that those facts are accurate? (based on her own testimony, which she said she was willing to swear to in a court of law, and she provided details that supposedly were corroborated, at least enough to place her at one of those parties, yes run by Epstein, where that occurred - e.g. there was an actual photo of her + DT standing together iirc; which I note that even if she faked a portion of the story, the news media source itself seems like they had done their due diligence at that point)
Whereas for the OP article I feel far more "betrayed", by its title, seeking to place blame solely onto baby boomers who are stuck in their giant empty homes due to the mortgage rates & housing availability situation - which they themselves may not feel is optimal (higher costs of heating / cooling for one) - rather than on the real sources that are causing the actual "problems" that the title alluded to. But live & learn - and from now on I will know to heavily distrust any article coming forth from CNN, which I find so incredibly sad, but like the housing crisis itself, is simply the unfortunate truth nowadays:-(.
Fortunately it's not quite as bad as Brietbart, at least not yet...:-(
Yeah, it's tricky. There is a point where a headline becomes deceiving and it's very hard to pinpoint where that is. I like your AI idea and will do some experiments along those lines.
I would say that if something, anything - a title, the article itself, etc. - informs, then it is useful, while if it MISLEADS then it becomes... the opposite. Right? In computer science, as I am guessing you are aware, that term even has the special name of a "worst-case scenario", being by far and above more damning than an average- or best-case one, and which has extremely important security and other considerations.
The title describes 2 active agents - boomers vs. young families - and sets them up in an adversarial capacity, even placing them at opposing ends of the sentence, connected together with "homes" and "problem". Btw, tbh I am aware that I may be thinking about this title more than the author themselves did, but even if so that does not negate the "strategy" involved - e.g. a spider puts out its web without any thought whatsoever, yet it still works, i.e., whether through the blind natural processes of thoughts evolving such that those that survive tend to be propagated while those that fail tend to be left behind. Anyway, ARE baby boomers and young families adversaries in this "fight", or is this yet another instance of the tactic of "controlling the conversation" - a tactic nowhere near pioneered by the Alt-Right, yet used to great effect by them lately nonetheless?
Which begs the question: if this media source, owned by extraordinarily wealthy people who live lives so disconnected and above the rest of us that the vast majority of us will literally never meet one during the course of our entire lives, is trying to pit boomers vs. young families against one another, what could they possibly hope to gain? Especially at the cost of journalistic integrity, that they used to uphold?! (or at least make the appearance of that anyway) Could it be that the owner(s) of CNN, or their friends, has & continues to make a TON of money by buying up real estate? i.e., I am saying that there are not merely 2 active agents here: there is a 3rd! (but one that this title is going to some trouble to hide away, by distracting us in pointing us towards the two other sides) This 3rd one, (purposefully?) not mentioned at all by this title, is the one causing all of those "problems"! Therefore in effect, it is really the prime agent even, hence arguably the one that was most worth mentioning in the first place? As in this alternative titling: "the wealthy tying up the housing market harms empty-nest baby boomers & young families alike, in different ways". You can imagine this in graph form as the prime agent with arrows pointing to each of the other 2, while the OG title ignores the prime agent entirely and substitutes the two arrows with a subtle & singular arrow from the baby boomers towards the young families - b/c SOMEBODY has to be causing these "problems", right? And if it is not the fault of the young families... why then, who else even exists that could be to blame, hrm....?!? Hence the active verbage there "Boomers WON'T PART", as I mentioned earlier like they are having some kind of dementia-addled temper tantrum akin to that of a toddler, who just needs the real adults (the "young families"... b/c that is the only other agent that exists, right?) to step up and do the right thing, perhaps convincing or even just simply to take it from them. When in reality the REAL, prime agent, who has an "in" with the media source, gets off scott-free of blame.
Fortunately, AI is a powerful tool, and while I think it will ultimately do a great deal of harm to our society (meh, the same as everything else though - like nukes, gunpowder, probably even fire itself originally:-D), it can also be used for great good as well, depending on how the user chooses to wield it. Thus I wish you luck in that endeavor! I will say that its victory may be short-lived though, as the success of titles such as these will only serve to embolden those who would push for their existence in the first place, and thus surely the content of the articles themselves at CNN will start to be affected next. i.e. AI can certainly be trained to replace the titles (possibly sometimes to hilarious effects, but likely quite useful often enough?), but until it is ready to replace the entire content of the article as well, filling in gaps by doing first-hand research even, it will never solve the problem of preventing us from being harmed by misinformation. Not that that makes it not worth doing - it could be fun, and even a help purely in the short-term is still a help, so yeah, I wish you luck!:-D
I'm here to say thank you for keeping your cool on the internet despite the clickbait and somewhat ragebait headline.
This definitely helps make the Fediverse a nicer place.
Thank you for the thanks, and sorry that someone is downvoting you even for saying that much. At this point I think I'll start wearing my downvotes as a matter of pride
just like on ole Reddit. I would very much like it if the Fediverse would be cleaner and nicer than where we left, so indeed that starts with myself.:-)Nobody expects anyone to give up their own home.
The article wants you to tell grandma to get the fuck out.
I'll just take those "journalists'" houses instead.
And where is it suggested boomers should live? My MIL has a paid-for home, but is now in assisted living. It costs 6K a month, which is eating through her savings at a shocking rate, even though we're paying a portion of her AL rent.
If she had the ability to stay home, you better believe she would, because she can't afford to part with her home.
I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I'm genuinely curious: your MIL is in expensive assisted living yet still owns a home she's no longer living in? Wouldn't the move here be to sell the home now with housing prices so high, and use the profits from it to fund the assisted living expenses?
Not insensitive at all. It isn't worth a lot as far as selling goes, but it does generate good income as a rental.
I actually agree with you, but I'm the DIL, and my husband and MIL agreed on renting.
I mean, in this case it's what works for her then, but it's literally the exact sort of thing the article is dealing with.
Worse in this case because she's owning the home, not living in it, and using it to generate passive income, specifically preventing what might have been a younger generation of homeowners from making that investment and instead forcing them into the very rental market she's profiting from.
And I'm not saying she's a bad person or a bad landlord or anything, just that this is an example supporting the piece, not an exception to it.
I actually agree with you much more than I disagree.
It's part of a family trust, meant to be passed on. Think 150 year old home that hasn't been renovated since the 60s.
It is near a university and has several bedrooms, so it's generating enough income to help pay her rent. It is literally worth more as a rental than a sell. And one day my poor kids will have to deal with this millstone around their necks.
If my MIL did sell, it would probably be torn down and replaced with an apt complex/student housing.
It's extra fucked in California because the boomers passed a law to set property taxes at the time of purchase and only allow for small increases over the years. Rising home prices don't have corresponding rising taxes so the old farts are never priced out of their huge empty houses.
Heaping ever increasing taxes on the elderly doesn't sound ideal either tbh.
Imagine having to give up your home because your neighbours property value increased and thus your taxes went up due to the increased value of your home. Sure you could sell away your life and move into a smaller building in a different part of the country (or worse, a retirement home), but should we advocate for people to lose their homes when a better solution is for government to build more affordable housing for people?
Imagine giving immortal corporations a property tax based on 1976 prices plus a maximum annual increase of 2% instead of just granting an exception to property taxes for your primary residence. Imagine leaving your grandkids with no money to run a government because you're that fucking dumb and greedy. Fuck the boomers, I hope the PG&E bills to cool their giant homes fucking bury them.
I've moved 8 times in the last 15 years so I can't say I feel too bad about the idea of people "losing" their home by selling it and moving somewhere smaller.
So because you have it shitty, everyone else should join you?
All I’d like is a place to settle down and become part of a community. I’m sick of being transient because of capitalism.
Who said I have it bad?
Corporations and foreign countries are buying up real estate like crazy and OP wants to blame retired people? STFU.
Yeah, old people! Get out of your houses! Die in the street for everyone else's benefit!
Just like how you were supposed to die to vote for Trump in the Iowa caucus and die from COVID to help the economy.
The point is, this is entirely your fault and we hate you and go die. In a hole preferably, so we don't have to hear you moan about needing social security and medicare.
Sincerely,
Republicans
(P.S. Vote for us before you die! Kthx.)
For sure, you know those famous republican rags "CNN." "Indipendent.co.uk" and "Vanity Fair."
Sorry... are you under the absolute bizarre impression that because I linked to two articles that quote what Republicans say, I am saying those two sources are Republican?
As for CNN... who just hosted a pointless Republican debate?
I just think it's funny to be complaining about the republicans doing something and post three sources of their opposition doing the it, instead of finding three republican "pro killing boomers and making them leave their homes" articles which I'm sure you could have.
So you're doubling down on CNN being the republican's news outlet? Oh right I forgot about the party switch, you know, when all the CNN guys became republicans and all the Fox guys became Democrats. Silly me.
I suppose I could have found articles about things I didn't know people said, but I decided to go with the ones I did know about.
And CNN is whatever its WB masters think will most benefit them... but if you think it's left-wing to allow two Republicans to spend a huge amount of prime time on your news network spewing their false talking points unchallenged except by each other, I don't know what to tell you.
Right, and then say other people said it, it's just an odd choice.
"Are democrats left wing" is another convo, but CNN is demonstrably democrats. That's like denying Fox is "the republican one."
The entire network is a challenge to the republicans, they're literally the news outlet of "the other side" as fox is to the republicans. Idk what to tell you dude.
It seems you're operating on old news. CNN has changed hands and its stakeholders expressly want CNN to be FOX.
They're happy leaving the libs MSNBC.
Oh shit, I may be actually. When did this happen?
Like three times since 2022, but most recently I think August 2023.
Oh shit thanks for the heads up!
Again- why did they devote a large block of prime time to allow Republicans to spew talking points unchallenged if that is true?
My mistake, it has been brought to my attention that they have come under new ownership as of late and that my info is no longer true, that's my bad.
No it's not. Hedge funds and banks and corporations are buying the starter homes. The homes boomers are in are not the starter homes.
This entire line of thinking is a red herring to distract from hedge funds destroying our housing economy.
My 90 year old grandmother refuses to go to a nursing home (and honestly I can’t blame her) and actually just blew a ton of money getting her home remodeled. She has no plans to leave until she passes away, at which point the house will go to my father who has plans to sell it.
Meanwhile, my wife and I barely make the median income amount and, at 36, we’re never going to be able to afford a home.
And your dad will spend that money like it will never end, leaving you with nothing.
Mhm. He and my mother plan on moving to Alaska with my uncle.
Amazing. They got their shot and are still hoarding it. So sad.
If my parents invested a FRACTION of the money they have just thrown out into the world in their children, our lives would be so much better. They really have always just done whatever made them happy, hey, we're adults, right, they aren't responsible for us anymore or something.
Not sure how common this is nationally, but around here it's also common for the older generation to maintain two properties a "home" in the city/metro area near their kids or grandkids and a "cabin" which is literally a second home somewhere else.
I think it'd be great to give up the home in the metro and downsize to a condo or apartment, but that's just me.
Good luck finding a condo. Plus all the fees of moving and taxes.
I bought my first house in 2010, during the last dip in the housing market. Sold every asset I could for the down payment and end up with a mortgage payment I could afford. The value of the home has since increased 3x from when I bought it; I couldn't afford to buy the place today, let alone move someplace else. My major source of frustration has been property taxes, which now cost 1.5x more than my mortgage payment. I'm not entirely certain I'll be able to STAY in this place if they keep going up 20%/year like they have been.
Somewhat similar here. Bought in 2011, with housing prices still depressed by the 2008 crash. Since then, we've put a good bit of money into the place (it needed work, still does). We also have kids now, so the space is really nice to have. The house now appraises for 2.5-3x what we spent for it, which is not justified by the money we've spent on it and is mostly driven by the market going nuts. While we might be able to swing the mortgage, were we to be buying the place now, it'd be very tight. Also, there's just no incentive to move. The local schools are good. The neighborhood is nice, I work from home (wife doesn't work), so there is no commute. We know and like our neighbors and regularly have neighborhood BBQs in the cul-de-sac.. Sure, when the kids are gone, we might consider a smaller home further out, with more land and less neighbors. But more likely, we're just going to keep putting money and effort into this house and let the kids drag our desiccated corpses out of the place.
I feel like most of the thumbnails I see for news articles are AI generated now.
This one's real.
Wtf. Some of those houses are ridiculous.
They trying to distract us. I aint looking at the single home owning boomers, its landlords and corporate real estate companies hoarding homes.
Baby Boomers, Millenials, amd Gen Z account for.. 42% of homes.
Classic Gen X erasure aside... I have doubt Gen X owns the remaining 58% today. The article does mention 18% of gen X owned 10 years ago. And I am doubtful the Silent Generation is still clinging to their numbers.
And so under the most charitable interpretation: that is still a 20% gap of ownership by what I can only assume is a business enterprise.
This article is cherry picking numbers from a Redfin study. It says 28% empty-nest Boomers vs 14% Millennials with kids. Together those two subsets own 42% of large homes (3+ bedrooms). So that doesn't account for elder GenZ, Millennials without kids, all of GenX, and any boomers that don't count as "empty-nest" for whatever reason. It's not half corps like everyone keeps saying.
~3000 baby boomers die every day.
Some of them will part with their homes.
Hopefully most of those homes go to their kids so they can actually have a chance at home ownership in this shithole of a world we've built.
🎶I see babies crying… 🎶
I think inheritance is one of the evils in the world. Why should I have something because my parents did? It focuses and increases inequality. Not saying you are wrong in the world we currently live in, and I know it's too complicated to implement but I wish wealth was distributed out when people died. So we could start on a more even playing field.
Yeah my husband laughed at me when I said I wanted to move to this neighborhood because when I walked the dog I saw all these truly ancient people mowing their lawns, and figured:
People like it here enough to stay till they die
There would be a bunch of houses for sale when those owners died.
but he sure loves it here now. One day we will be those ancient people.
This isn’t the ‘Boomers’ fault. It’s large corporate property portfolios vacuuming up houses and land to take in the lovely extortion… uh…‘rent’ monies.
Eventually they will
But it's not a problem for boomers who like having all the stuff and not sharing, so why change it?
What do you mean by "other people"?
Hmm. In my opinion it's preferable if the boomers keep their houses so their children can inherit the value.
Where I live, it's a bigger issue that boomers sell their houses too cheap to companies that demolish the house to build apartments. The boomers then waste the money on renting overpriced apartments for the rest of their life.
I get that it's difficult to maintain a house as you grow older and these houses are usually not well maintained, but they're really just pissing their value away.
A bunch of apartments vs. a single-family home is better in terms of offering housing to more people.
We don't have a shortage of houses where I live. We have a shortage of affordable houses. Luxury rental apartments too small for families won't help that. They're basically removing properties and increasing the prices on the market. Instead of being able to pay X amount of money to a mortgage people can now pay the same amount for renting only part of it.
In my country... It's both!
Not enough, what is available is expensive and so is rent.
Gee, boomers are being selfish! Who would have guessed?
Probably because of this young people have stopped respecting boomers. Last week a guy in his 20's assaulted a boomer at our local grocery shop.