[HN Gopher] Baby boomers are snatching houses out of the hands o...
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Baby boomers are snatching houses out of the hands of millennials
Author : harambae
Score : 19 points
Date : 2021-10-16 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| maxerickson wrote:
| Assisted living is a much higher level of care than a retirement
| community, which I think is probably the sort of place the
| article means.
|
| (assisted living is where you go when you can't meet all of your
| own daily needs anymore, not where you go when you get sick of
| mowing the lawn)
| gruez wrote:
| The article is trying really hard to push an inter-generational
| conflict narrative, but it's missing a very important detail: are
| boomers adding/subtracting from the housing supply, on net? They
| are "more active in the housing market" and are responsible for
| more of the housing purchases, but that itself isn't really an
| indication of anything. If they're just upsizing/downsizing, then
| they're not "snatching houses" from the overall housing supply.
| If anything, boomers selling houses in urban centers for
| suburban/rural houses (I suspect boomers aren't dying to get a
| house in SF for the nightlife) should be a good thing for
| millennials. The linked zillow report hints at this, because they
| also mention boomers using their equity for all-cash offers. If
| they were buying a second house, that would indeed be bad, but I
| doubt this is the case. I don't think banks would give a $500k
| mortgage to 60 year olds.
| GaryTang wrote:
| Even if they are buying second houses, I highly doubt that
| boomers are having anywhere near as large an impact on housing
| markets in relation to large corporations and financial
| institutions that are buying more and more residential
| properties. These larger organizations are pinning the blame on
| boomers via PR, when there is really no comparison in who has
| more invested.
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2021-09-09/com...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Great point. "nationally, investors bought more homes than
| they sold in the first half of this year"
| fxtentacle wrote:
| In my neighborhood, old people are investing their savings into
| houses and then rent them out. The hope is that they'll be able
| to live off the rent during their retirement. And since covid,
| people are more afraid of upcoming inflation, so housing prices
| grew even stronger in 2020 than in 2019.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| If you're buying a home and living in it (which is what it sounds
| like the boomers are doing), I can't really find room for
| criticism. I think having a chance to build equity in a home you
| live in is a great thing.
|
| If they're snatching these houses to rent out, deny others a
| chance at equity, and profit off of (overcharge) the less
| fortunate, especially during a housing shortage with no end in
| sight, I have a problem.
|
| Building more housing will always be the primary solution to the
| housing crisis, but not letting the greedy steal homes would be a
| nice short-term bandaid.
| GaryTang wrote:
| Is it really a problem if boomers are buying second, third, or
| even fourth homes to rent out? This has long been a common path
| for the elderly to afford healthcare and living expenses in
| their golden years rather than relying on the government.
|
| I feel large companies and financial institutions that are
| buying up swaths of residential properties are trying to find a
| scapegoat and they have found one in boomers. I imagine we will
| see more propaganda pieces like this one, pinning the blame on
| them.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Setting us up for a house price crash in ten to fifteen years, as
| the Boomers age into their years of disability and want to sell
| their houses so they can move into "assisted living" /
| "sheltered" housing.
|
| It's really worth having a look at the charts in [1]. People are
| living longer (age at death is compressing to a peak around 90
| years old), but there are still about 15 years of ill health
| before death.
|
| Since we know the age of the baby boomers, we can predict this
| crash.
|
| 1.Robine, Jean-Marie, UN Department of Economic and Social
| Affairs, September 2021. _Ageing Populations: We are living
| longer lives, but are we healthier?_ UN Ref: UN DESA
| /POP/2021/TP/NO.2. Downloaded from
| https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/ on 11 Oct 2021.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > Setting us up for a house price crash in ten to fifteen
| years, as the Boomers age into their years of disability and
| want to sell their houses so they can move into "assisted
| living" / "sheltered" housing.
|
| I'm really not sure where you are getting your numbers. Only
| 4.5% of seniors live in assisted living facilities. Most people
| will never set foot in one -- they will live independently up
| until they die, possibly spending a few weeks in hospice if
| things drag out. With new tech it is even easier now to live on
| your own -- e.g. you can order things delivered, there is
| telemedicine, grocery delivery, meal delivery, house cleaning
| services, uber, etc. Moreover you can now get little motors to
| take you up stairs, there are all sorts of automated
| appliances. The days of a large share of seniors needing to
| live in assisted living are long gone.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK51841/
| tuatoru wrote:
| Yes, I put that badly. But medical and living assistance
| costs go up steeply after 75, and many people will sell
| properties to pay for them.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| For nursing homes, it's 1% for ages 65-74, 3% for 75-84 and
| 9% for persons age 85 and over. Half of all those in
| nursing homes are older than 85.
|
| For general expenses, there are reverse mortgages for this.
| But again, I'm not sure what difference it makes to sell
| the house before rather than after you die -- especially
| for really old people. It will go on the market either way.
| Even if you give the home to a child, they will either sell
| it, or move into it and sell their existing home.
|
| Either way, when someone dies, the demand for housing
| decreases by 1. So declining populations do lead to cheaper
| housing (which is a good thing in places where housing is
| expensive).
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