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.
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.