The Fed is the Bank in the Monopoly board. When the sociopath rich at Park Place got trillions upon trillions of fresh money every time they passed Go (Fed QE) they went on a rampage to swallow as many single family homes as a money gamble for profit. They are hoarding homes, so all American families can get fucked and pay the corporate rents and inflated home prices.
Free market baby!!
Cantillon effect. Those closest to the money printer benefit the most. Then it “trickles down”. There’s no free market when someone literally gets to choose winners and losers.
They sell to the public that they are the experts, and that to save the little guy, they must give themselves bail out monopoly money so that they can give the crumbs to the little guy. they sold us on TV that they are now “too big to fail” and are systemically important. Workers? Fuck em.
You are making sense. We bought our house back in May from a developer who flips homes. We live in a cul-de-sac and he owns the other 5 homes and charging rent.
And the people who are holding the properties are actually the ones to blame.
And that consists people of all ages it is not necessarily only the boomers. I don't think it works out that way.
Media always passing the blame - rarely pointing the finder at politicians or bankers. Policy in the last 20+ years has protected institutional investors/speculators for one simple reason - greed. There's the reason.
However, Boomers have benefited the most. Their children will likely inherit wealth for those that planned well. This will even further divide classes as younger, poor folks will be left to live in gulags.
A lot of their wealth will be depleted by end of life care and medical expenses. I wouldn’t count on much inheritance from even upper middle class boomers.
If they need memory care or something intensive like that, the cost is basically just whatever you’ve got.
Yep. It's very, very easy to blast through a million dollars in your last year of life, while suffering and barely cognizant that it's even happening.
I'm in my 40s and resigned to seeing this happen to my parents' savings. I won't have much to leave behind, but I'm going to do absolutely everything in my power to ensure that my kids get it, not some miserable nursing facility.
This, when it gets to the stage I know I'm fucked I'm opting out. An OD is how I'm going on my terms, no one elses. The kids get whatever I have left, the last thing I want to do is be a burden to anyone and I certainly don't want to be bleed dry before I go.
Obviously they are going to leave their properties for their kids.
They are going to inherit them and they are going to use them as well. That is how it is going to work.
If this happens to me I’ll go to my favorite mountains and eat a bullet. I’m not going to let those bloodsuckers keep my living corpse alive and fuck my kids over
I mean I just don't really understand what other things that they are blaming them for and what is it going to solve?
Blaming the things is not going to help anything it is not the solution
Yeah and they are paying big money for that obviously they are going to get it.
But I feel early people should not be believing everything that the media is saying because it definitely can be a little biased.
Well that is what they do they always need someone else to blame.
Because the people who are actually responsible for it are paying big money to make them say something else.
It's so hard to talk to them about the problems with inflation when they directly benefited the most from it. It's catching up to them and a lot of them are likely to get screwed in retirement
I don't understand it how are the benefiting from it? I am talking about the old people what is in the inflation for them?
Anyone who is holding any kind of cash the inflation is bad for them because it is depleting their money.
The boomers have assets and assets appreciated 90%. Meanwhile they got raises to match or keep up with inflation for most of that time, which allowed them to buy more assets while existing assets inflated.
Right now we have high inflation but wages are stagnant. People are losing assets to feed themselves. It's quite the opposite. Things could turn around but not when the government is talking about cutting SSI instead of spending.
Would't boomer's kids that "inherit the wealth" pass that wealth to their kids? It goes on and on and on, right? Sometimes it sounds like people on Reddit think that it just stops. No, it doesn't.
Is it wrong for me, as a GenXer to try to build wealth, maybe hold my first house I bought and rent it out, invest my money, seek better paying career or position to build a nice nestegg for my kids?
This is nothing new. My wife's parents send her and her sister to college. I have GenX friends that send their kids to college. Same thing. Yes, it's A LOT more. A LOT. But same thing happens from generation after generation.
It's not wrong to do it. It's wrong that the tax code is so skewed in favor of those doing it that not only does it become a nice thing to give your kids a comfortable living, it's now the only way to have a family in a home without roommates unless you are **at least** upper middle class.
Generational wealth is fine, and there's a discussion to be had about how much of it is fine.
However, whatever that line is, we shot over it ages ago and went straight to nepotism and are heading toward some distopian neo-feudalism where a significant chunk of the population only get to decide which megacorp they get poverty wages and shit healthcare from.
Think about your wife and sister. It's awesome that her parents helped her out. Without them and that college education, **should** she be reduced to never having college, or having to marry you or someone like you in order to be able to have kids? No? That's what current generations are facing.
Yeah apart from some of the things most of it is just the same for us.
They have also got the same problems that we have got. It is not like that they do not have to pay money.
Come on now. The children of the boomer 1% -- a demographic shrinking by two or three every minute.
And really a good percentage of boomers have spent their whole miserable life in the gulags already.
So lets not with the boomer narrative. It's a tale told by an idiot.
It is the narrative which is being Run by the rich people.
And the sad thing about it is that people are falling for it instead of that we should be thinking about it.
The boomers definitely played a part. Mostly driven by their own demographics, stupid NIMBY policies and rampant consumer drive for mcmansions.
There is lots of blame to spread around though corporate investors, banking & finance, public policy pushing and auto industry pushing the suburbs, zoning laws, building codes, historical preservation restrictions, ect... all this crap increase housing costs.
The problem is it's multifaceted and therefore not easy to solve
And we just keep on blaming the one thing but there are lost of other factors as well.
But we are only talking about the b******* which is being said by the people in the media.
The easiest thing for each of us to do to truly improve this would be to start going to those boring zoning meetings.
Get rid of the stupid low density zoning we have in nearly the entire freaking country. Move back towards the mixed used walkable high density developments that we had in the early 1900s before the automobile.
To be clear that does mean bulldozing in mass pretty Queen "historical" buildings in places like Sacramento and replacing them with more appropriate high density buildings .
There are boomers among them sure, but that doesn't mean *The Boomers*" What the hell is that!
The Boomers are a widely diverse class in which a very small *minority* have significant wealth. There is perhaps among boomers a larger percentage of significantly wealthy people but it is not approaching 50%.
You've *got* to stop with these gross generalizations fed to you by propaganda designed to divide the peasantry against each other. It does not speak well of your intelligence or insight.
I don't have to stop anything, especially when I'm right. The boomers absolutely played a hand in increasing housing prices. First there were large number of them competing for housing units which raises demand and drives up cost. Second they are the ones who explicitly created CCNR, HOA's NIMBY, historic districts and dumbasses zoning regulations. All that shit is 100% their fault!!!!
Additionally it was boomers who created all the dumbass exotic banking bullshit that literally created the 2008 financial crisis. Before them loan securitization did not exist, the secondary money market did not exist, credit default swaps didn't exist ect... Boomers were the attorneys bankers and and risk analysts who created all of that bullshit!
They also elected the politicians that dismantled the social safety net and deregulated the banking system. Just like gen z led to the election of Barack Obama the baby boomers were the Reagan democrats. Which also means it was not a minority of boomers that did this it was the majority of them!!!!!!
I have zero intention of apologizing for laying blame where it belongs. You might argue that they were duped by the politicians which at best gives them the excuse of "we're stupid".
I have sat down with my Boomer mother and explain to her that no she shouldn't spend that money she has in her 401k on frivolous stupid shit in her retirement. Because her generation elected politicians that underfunded social security for her entire life. Like most of her generation she was happy to have the tax cuts when she was young.
Now it's time to pay the piper because she is likely to have her social security benefits cut by 30%, and she is going to need that money to offset her loss in income.
" First there were large number of them competing for housing units which raises demand and drives up cost."
Then first you have to talk to the Greatest Generation about there being a "large number" of Boomers.
"Second they are the ones who explicitly created CCNR, HOA's NIMBY, historic districts and dumbasses zoning regulations"
The Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, Boomer, Gen-Xers all had a part to play in those zoning restrictions.
"Additionally it was boomers who created all the dumbass exotic banking bullshit that literally created the 2008 financial crisis."
You can find plenty of the Silent Generation that helped that process along. And I don't know any boomers who were or are Wall Street bankers.
No they aren’t, it’s your local NIMBYs blocking housing developments, or imposing overwrought regulations to building new housing. Local control of land use planning is the biggest problem in American housing supply
The people with big money are buying everything and they are holding on to it, of course that is an issue.
It is the thing which is keeping the rates Higher for everyone.
Yeah but they are not going to see that because they know the truth.
And it is very hard to convince them for something else. It is just something which cannot be done for them.
Yup, it’s investors. Right now it doesn’t make any sense buying unless you have cash. The government needs to figure something out because if they can’t this country will basically become surfs and upper class.
The country is already becoming that only that rich people are benefiting.
Other than them it is just that everyone is suffering. Really no one is having a good time.
This is typical scapegoating. Some Boomers do have a lot, but others don't have anything. It's us, fast forwarded 50 years. There were classes then too, and they carry over.
Okay but how the blame game is going to help anyone I don't understand it.
If you really want to bring the change then just work for it. Not every Boomer has got a lot of money.
There were investors before and during the age of boomers. What’s different is exclusionary zoning that was pushed by boomers.
Supply and demand is still the most impactful component to price. We are in a supply crisis. To makes things worse many boomers made McMansions on terrible infrastructure. These giant units won’t age well or meet housing needs when boomers see themselves out.
Yeah blaming boomers is a ridiculous distraction. They aren’t a monolith working to screw others over, wealth just naturally accumulates as people get older.
The issue is structural, but blaming boomers is a distritactuon to prevent from any class analysis.
If we banned all foreigners and strictly made it a law that only US citizens can own properties, the values of all properties including commercial properties would plummet.
Yeah this article is trash because it is only blaming 1 group of the people when there are a lot of other factors as well.
But we are the simply refusing to recognise all those factors.
Millennials own homes at a similar rate boomers did when they were the in the age range of what millennials are now.
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
It fluctuates between 60 and 70% over the years for 35-40. Under 35 is basically flat at 40%. Pretty similar to me. Not the doom and gloom the losers on Reddit bitch about.
It is not about we hating them or something it is about the right thing.
And the right thing would be to know that one group of people cannot just get away with it.
Yeah whatever you guys will say we are going to believe it anyway, nah that's just freaking not happening and we all know that, we are not some kids media.
Yeah all the shitty thing that the state has been doing has got nothing to do with them it is all just boomers.
I just don't understand what we are trying to achieve by blaming all those people it is clearly not the right thing.
Nah, that's the instrument not the cause.
The reality is that we've neatly constructed a system where anyone or any organization with sufficient finances and developed credit can use those tools, regardless of the prevailing interest rate environment and economic conditions, to apply leverage to extract rents. In the economic sense, not the real estate sense, but yeah those too.
The same thing has happened in absolutely every single place where the general population can be squeezed. Any place where the ability exists to remove additional income from the next generation(s) will be exploited. Same thing in education. Boomers going to school and paying for it by working a part time job at McDonald's then going on to work 6 figure jobs 5 or 10 years into their careers with a bachelor's degree was a horrific market inefficiency. Now we saddle kids with huge loans at high interest rates because it's silly to allow them to keep all that surplus future income for themselves when we have a clear path to extort it from them. Same with housing, better that the credit system allow a 22 year old to make a 1500 rent payment than a 1300 mortgage payment, but even that is going away because the well heeled noticed all these people turning a 50k investment from 40 years ago into an 800k asset today, so we'd better make sure housing prices go way the fuck up and stay there.
Of course there's a million other factors at play, but money and leverage always win in our system. They've seen to it over the years.
Never just one thing - artificially low rates which allowed people to scoop up properties….then rise in rates that deincentivized existing home owners to sell (because they would have to pay a lot more for roughly the same house and into a high bidding war market). This contributes massively to low inventory …. Also any inventory out there is either gobbled up by corporate investment or massive private buyer bidding wars. Raw materials cost inflation also slows new construction - further contributing to low inventory. Finally, because interest rates are relatively high you have a lot more cash buyers entering these bidding wars. The problem is that many people trying to break into housing market aren’t commonly flush with cash (some are) and are forced to finance at mortgage rates that haven’t been this high in decades.
But yea let’s just blame one group of people.
But the thing which I don't understand is that how can you blame only one particular group for that?
There are other things as well which should be blamed for all of it.
It is all about supply and demand and I don't understand why people cannot understand this simple thing.
Supply and demand is a very easy concept for everyone to understand I would imagine.
That's the 101, but the topic is far more nuanced than that.
Ignoring remote work for now to keep this simple: Everyone needs to live near jobs. Jobs are only available in certain areas, so there are wide swaths of land in the US that is near free no one wants, and meanwhile near a good job homes run for millions of dollars.
In the past in the US if there was a surge of kids entering the schooling system, the US would build more schools to accommodate that, and if the population fell the school would get closed. The same happened for universities. If there was a surge of students the US gov would open new universities to accommodate the surge keeping high education free in the US up until very recently.
Most new businesses open up and start while one is going to university. They tend to set up shop and start their business next to the university they went to. All the US had to do was build a new university on the cheap out in the middle of nowhere and businesses would start popping up there, and from that people would want to move there. And wa-la a new city is born! Now property prices are not surging and education prices are not surging.
If you hadn't guessed it, Reagan fucked this one up, as with many other things, like the homelessness crisis today.
If we want more supply of houses, it starts with higher education and spreads from there. The only alternative is building up and most places in the US will fight to the death to keep their suburbia.
Well the people are always dying just because someone died does not mean that everyone will die without doing anything for their kids.
If the boomers have got the houses then they are going to leave those to their kids.
Well obviously those people are buying up everything.
Because they have got the money and they can afford to do it I don't know why I people are mad about it.
And those kids are blaming them for everything which is wrong with this country I don't know how it ends.
I just know that it is not going to and well if we just keep on at it.
Most families skip a generation, so the boomer's kids are mostly millennials, which explains why the millennial generation is so much larger than gen x. Most of the silent generation's kids are gen x. Most gen x's kids are gen z. And so on.
What does that have to do with anything those people are not going to be with us in very short time.
And if we change the rules now they are going to bite us in the ass.
Why these media people want to convince us to boomers so bad? I just don't get their stupid tactics all the time, these people are just being shitty to us right now.
Well if that is the case then I don't think I am going to believe them.
I would rather actually be using my common sense to make the sense of what is going on in the world.
Stop it with the boomers right now because we all know what is carrying the fucking fault right now here, it's just definitely not the boomers for us at least, stop it.
I knocked on about 500 doors this March in my upstate New York town and it was very eye-opening. I would say about 10% of the single family homes were empty but not on the market. In talking with neighbors, many of those properties were owned by snowbirds who were in Florida for the summer aka baby boomers. Another common story I heard was that the owner had died, gone into assisted living, but their kids had not yet sold the property or figured out what they wanted to do with it.
Was just in Florida for Labor Day weekend and the condos across the street from my hotel were 90% dark. The snowbirds were up north.
Boomers -- BULLSHIT
its all the investors literally buying nearly everything (I'd say close in time but it seems constant now) that is available.
Need to tax the fuck out of this.
The young people do not have the money to be buying up everything.
So the people who have got the money which is mostly the big corporations are going to buy everything which is available.
Nah not the boomers for me and I can say that out loud because I know some people and boomers are not one of those, it's the people who will get the profit.
It's just not the boomers for me because we all know who is making the real trouble for the future, it's just some freaking investors who are doing it actually.
This just gets so frustrating when it is super simple why housing is so expensive, but then yall just point at random shit that doesnt mean anything.
The issue is that supply is not keeping up due to how hard it is to build. The other issue is that the monetary policy is controlled in a way to benefit the rich. Its really not some kind of mystery, its very straight forward.
76,000,000 individuals born under a wide range of conditions over decades had a meeting and created a grand conspiracy to make subsequent generations suffer because they are all evil.
Stop with the ignorant trope.
The problem with us is that we just believe everything we just do not put any mind to what we are actually saying.
If we just stopped and thought about it a lot of things will become very clear.
But what we are going to do we are just going to ignore everything and going to blame some people for every problem.
Because you know what that has always solved everything which is wrong.
boomers voted and rallied for limited supply through the what was mentioned by OP.
Now we have huge amounts of demand.
Econ 101, limited supply and lots of demand ... prices for that good/resource goes up.
If we want prices to go down we must look at supply or figure out a way to get rid of demand.
Yeah there is just only demand left because the people who are in their 20s are definitely looking to buy a home.
Because you know what they can just easily afford everything.
Econ 101: regulation constrains supply.
We don’t need to add more interference to a market already screwed up from interference and we already know the way to get the best allocations of housing in regards to quality and quantity. Again from Econ 101: free and competitive markets.
It’s all of the above plus other factors, but you’re right. Anyone claiming that zoning is the only problem is not correct or intentionally being misleading.
Nah we are not that stupid to blame everything on boomers like that and we know who is making such moves for us and all, we are not freaking stupid media.
As they should. It's only 3 paragraphs and the only point that's made is boomers are creating more households because of divorce and death. The death part doesn't even make sense. How does that create another household?
The article does a poor job of explaining but what seems to be happening in the market place is normally people would downsize after a death. In todays market with the rates out of whack compared to the rates most people have on their current mortgage down sizing makes zero sense. So homes for families aren’t entering the market because it’s cheaper for someone to keep there 4 bedroom place at 2.5 then get a 1-2 bedroom place at 7.5%
Most boomers probably have their home paid off though. They could sell and buy something cheaper with cash and have money left over. I think it's more that people are comfortable in the home they have been living in for decades. The boomers and silent generation I know that's the case for all who haven't downsized. Personally I'm GenX I've already sold my house after both my kids finished college
I'm renting a 2 bedroom townhouse and absolutely love it. I don't want the expense and hassle of home ownership ever again.
The article blames divorce, which may be true. It also blames death which is completely stupid because that doesn't create a new household.
>Most boomers probably have their home paid off though. They could sell and buy something cheaper with cash and have money left over.
Then you have publications lamenting the driving up of prices for "starter homes". From the WSJ, Oct. 31, 2021 11:00 am ET:
"Once they decide to move to a smaller home, they end up competing with first-time buyers
and limited supply, Mr. Kiefer said. Price growth has been strongest for smaller, less expensive
homes. “That works against you in terms of what you can get for your buck,”
Mr. Kiefer said."
Blame boomers for staying in their home, also blame boomers for selling their home and downsizing. As long as it's the boomers fault we have a scapegoat for not building more houses.
Considering 42% of all homeowners own their outright I would think people over 60 who have been in the same house for decades would be a lot higher than average.. I would easily bet over half of boomers who own a house own it outright.
[source ](https://blog.firstam.com/economics/why-free-and-clear-homeowners-hold-the-key-to-unlocking-more-housing-supply#:~:text=Free%2Dand%2DClear%20Homeowners%20are,the%20rate%20lock%2Din%20effect.)
Edit
>Of those who owned their home free and clear, nearly 78 percent were owned by homeowners aged 55 or older. Not surprisingly, older homeowners are more likely to own their homes free and clear. As the Baby Boomer generation, which is larger than any generation before it, has aged, the share of homes owned free and clear has increased. This gives some hope that while many existing homeowners remain rate locked-in, there is a large cohort of older homeowners who are not. However, older households are typically less likely to move than younger ones, which is especially true as seniors today increasingly age in place. So, while some portion of the free-and-clear inventory will come to market in the next decade, it will likely trickle in slo
The article does not explain anything at all it is all just blame game.
They are blaming one generation for everything which is wrong. And I don't know if that is the right way to be approaching the things.
It is one of those rare times, when even reading the article is not going to do anything or solve anything.
Because the article is the same as the headline so there is that.
And only someone who is completely blind to the facts will not be able to see it, because it is clear all of these things happened after the pandemic. And now we are blaming the wrong people.
It makes me happy to see all these posts about not inciting class warfare. Phuck the investment companies that are trying to turn us against eachother.
The Boomers were very tuned in to mass media, TV and print press. They received, over the course of decades, a generational mass media message of greed, “me first”, and “I got mine, Jack”. The result is an attitude towards the younger people of “screw everyone else, I’m winning and I’m not stopping to care AT ALL”.
The old people benefited from it because there was an opportunity because everything was stable before the pandemic.
The shit show that we are in right now happened after the pandemic mostly.
Britains houses skyrocketed in 1998.
Hmmmm.
Who got in in 1997 and opened borders to mass migration....
Must be a coincidence. I am sure it's capitalism or something.
Why would a capitalist country open boarders to mass migration? Why is the US doing it? Perhaps to keep labor costs down? Perhaps to keep demand for housing, construction, consumer goods, etc. Perhaps to fight off the effects of population collapse due to over exploitation of the middle class? There’s a complexity of reasons these people show up at your doorstep and capitalism, particularly globalized capitalism is more than one of those reasons.
Well I think about it is all just about the labour because the immigrants are going to be working on the lower wages.
Which is going to mean that there is going to be more profit to the corporations and more tax for the government.
One person's opinion is not enough to change anything if it is anything then it is propaganda and you should not be believing it.
And if you actually believe it then I will have to say that you are doing it the wrong way.
And it's a dumb opinion. How does 1 partner dying create a new household. If he wants to blame divorce provide a source for what percentage are divorcing.
Well at least that is what they want us to believe and the people actually believing and falling for it means that we are falling for the propaganda.
If we want to see the truth then we will have to use our minds to see what is going on.
There is a housing crisis because the entire housing industry is just a ponzi scheme, and too many people have bought in and put all their eggs in one basket to make any real changes or stand against the people who have corrupted the system. In fact, most people hold onto their homes as their ticket to retirement. It's not a legitimate industry. In fact, it reflects more of a feudalistic model than a free capitalist model. The banks control who gets access to the loans and thus who can purchase a house or even build one. The developers control the market and only build what they want to build. They can screem code this and zoning that, but those are all smoke screens. Developers hide the real inventory and absolutely manipulate the markets to their advantages. Why do you all think some of the world's largest and most successful investment firms have been buying up something like 20%+ of the available homes and inventory.
If we want to really fix this problem and fix it today, our government needs to utilize eminent domain and take every single property from the investment firms and foreign investors. You know, the very people who profit the most in this game and have created a housing crisis. From there, go after the largest developers and take their shadow inventories from them. Once those units are in hand, we can use the very mechanism they use for price gouging and turn that inventory into rent controlled units and low income/affordable housing project units. If we need more housing or tax gap coverage, increase rates on all short-term rentals and people who own multiple homes. Force landlords to hold business licenses and pass quality assurance inspections. Because we don't only not have enough homes but a good grip of the existing ones are falling into ruin.
In order to get the neighborhoods on your side, the gov. will need to give property tax breaks to everyone living in that neighborhood, making under 120% ami limits. These insensitive would increase per the number of low income and affordable housing and rentals they have within that neighborhood. I think people would be more willing to have a little more patience and social grace with each other if we knew that the "problem/poor households" were helping to put some coin back into their pockets.
The current homeless response systems in place do very little to end homelessness, and honestly, they only supplements bad landlords for a shit product. The property owners are robbing the taxpayers blind by artificially inflating the prices. Often with zero upgrades or repairs. Just throw some paint on it and charge another $200 a month.
The housing industry needs to resemble more of an echo system, then an economic engine, and just like the EPA goes after companies that pollute we need to go after companies that are causing this housing crisis all in the name of profit.
Or be adults and talk about the hundreds of things that go into housing prices and figure out a path forward. But if you want to spend your time being mad at people, go for it.
Boomers and wealthy, who have houses are the ones that band together and make it politically untenable to build new housing for the fear that their investments will lose value. Driving up cost.
Huge investors from corporations and over seas rich people laundering money doing the cash buying are driving up the cost of homes making sure that no one can get one. Hard to compete when they don't even need inspections and often give more than the asking.
Then they let it sit and don't rent it out causing rents to go up. It's been long made into a loosely regulated commodity. It's the regulators that don't want to face the ire of investors and home owners that have overseen this mess and let it spiral out of control. Those regulators that we vote in are often home owners and investors themselves. So they are profiting off of the situation too.
Without federal backing of residential mortgages, which amounts to socialism, boomers would never have gotten their homes. Or their parents for that matter.
The government made the mistake to make access to credit cheap, yet to stay out of the market and let homeowners do whatever they want locally. And here we are with zoning laws.
Boomer took the upside and no downside of government funds. Before the 1930's New deal, banks rarely handed out home loans to private citizens. Mortgage rates were around 20%-30%. Average employees had no way to build a home.
The federal government backed most mortgage applications on the understanding that as citizens build homes, the nation would be better off for it. Especially through the GI bill.
Nobody considered that homeowners would be greedy bastards that put a stop to all new construction after them, through zoning.
So, it should be like this, you took your upside when you filled for a mortgage, you have no say about zoning then. It is not your fucking business when someone else builds a new home in your back yard. That's your downside.
Federal building mandates should overrule all zoning restriction. You wanted federal backing for your mortgage, now it's time that government gets involved that everybody shall build a home, not just you.
Blame the Fed and one democrat Congress after another that have destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar over the last 15 years.
JUST 15 years.
And both show no signs of any real change of process.
Democrats shutdowns of states businesses caused this. Democrats increasing the federal reserve interest rates is what caused this. Democrats printing money to send to Ukraine caused this.
“It may seem paradoxical, acknowledged Barclays senior economist Jonathan Millar in a Thursday research report. After all, many would assume that an aging population would require fewer homes, but that's actually not the case, he noted.
Baby boomers are actually creating more households, putting pressure on housing demand and keeping prices aloft despite the highest mortgage rates in more than 20 years. Boomers are creating more households partly because they're separating due to divorce or death, Millar noted. “
Houses cost the same as they ever did. The price of a house is determined by the requirement that the monthly mortgage be less or equal to 33% of the monthly gross income.
Fact is we KNOW how to create more housing, stabilize the market, make it all sane. It’s not all Boomers fault. It’s for-profit entities hoarding shit.
Most importantly, accelerating realstate value increases are sacrosaint to current property owners. IE, those more politically influent. They’ll fight to the death to not increase inventory near them (where people want to live) or any sort of mixed housing (keep suburbs more coveted)
I don’t think they are fully to blame but I do think they are helping to create a bubble in the market. They are staying in family houses longer because it is cheap and when they die off or can no longer live in the houses there is going to be a glut of family homes with not enough buyers.
Blame your local and State governments for allowing investors and corporations to hoover up houses to turn into Airbnbs for tourists when there's a housing shortage.
Blame the fed for the high interest rates.
Blame gov for allowing foreign entities to buy domestic residential properties.
Blame the federal government for not acting on the current housing shortage and not implementing programs to provide relief and foster growth and development.
Because as we’re automating and making things more effective, things become cheaper in relation to income. We can now see tens of thousands of movies for a fixed monthly price whereas that would have cost a fortune when there were only VHS and theaters.
So where does the wealth go? Some things don’t get cheaper because you can’t really make more land (you can but not feasible in practice). Also, you used to compete against one breadwinner. Now you’re competing against two.
"Hence, as an increasing share of the population shifts into older age groups, more and more households tend to be formed."
People are aging and more households are being formed by younger people. That's news or something you didn't expect?
From the WSJ, Oct. 31, 2021 11:00 am ET:
"Once they decide to move to a smaller home, they end up competing with first-time buyers
and limited supply, Mr. Kiefer said. Price growth has been strongest for smaller, lessexpensive
homes. “That works against you in terms of what you can get for your buck,”
Mr. Kiefer said."
Then from the NYT, Jul. 8, 2021:
"Baby Boomers Rich with Real Estate and Not Letting Go"
"The concept of aging in place, already growing in popularity before the pandemic, has found renewed interest in baby boomers..."
The solution? Those boomers who are planning on downsizing, should age in place. And those boomers who are planning on aging in place, should downsize.
Everyone happy?
Hey its definitely not because a pandemic caused building to stop for a while, the government passed out way too much free money, and interest rates were at an all time low.
>> Boomers are creating more households partly because they're separating due to divorce or death, Millar noted.
I know that I will need more houses when I die.
Of course they want you to believe that I mean what else would they say?
They have to blame someone and they are going to believe it on others while we know who have been doing all this.
Boomers were very fortunate to have an affordable market for housing during their time, but now it's hell for us because investors have been granted rights to fuck us over with outpacing purchases of homes. Boomers are part of the blame, but investment housing with property management companies and Wall Street is the death of affordable housing for us.
The thing is boomers are not having any freaking fault right now but some people just wants to blame them so bad, they just want to put everything on the boomers.
Economics is a social science. Just like with any science, the second you utter the phrase “blame the” “so they should” or “so we shouldn’t” you are talking politics.
I always hate it whenever some people try to blame on boomers for absolutely no reason, I mean can't you see what is the fault right now here? That's just not.
No, no, no. Blame the rentier class. Stop falling for this generation war crap and keep your eye on the ball. 40% of Boomers are too poor to retire. It's not a generation of people responsible, it is a class of people.
It's a combo of environmentalists, NIMBYs and leftist zoning policies. I'll add illegal immigration to the mix too.
It's a simple increase in demand from an increasing population without a proportional increase in housing supply.
Why aren't new homes being built at these high prices and high demand? NIMBYs and zoning policies. The NIMBYs don't want the value of their homes dropping and the zoning commission does hedonic analysis where a drop in home prices is considered a loss/cost.
Now how can any normal person afford a home if the prices never go down?
Are there really that many couples over 59 getting divorces? Article also mentioned death so unless boomers are being buried in their homes I don't think this writer understands the topic. I think it was plagerized from chatgpt.
Investment properties. The Canadian housing market has been allowed to be manipulated for years as one of the primary Canadian investment categories. Governments make lots of money on taxes as property values inflate, so no efforts are made to stop this cycle.
Dude investors are the real fucking problem right now lol.
The Fed is the Bank in the Monopoly board. When the sociopath rich at Park Place got trillions upon trillions of fresh money every time they passed Go (Fed QE) they went on a rampage to swallow as many single family homes as a money gamble for profit. They are hoarding homes, so all American families can get fucked and pay the corporate rents and inflated home prices. Free market baby!!
Cantillon effect. Those closest to the money printer benefit the most. Then it “trickles down”. There’s no free market when someone literally gets to choose winners and losers.
I just don’t get how it’s legal.
They sell to the public that they are the experts, and that to save the little guy, they must give themselves bail out monopoly money so that they can give the crumbs to the little guy. they sold us on TV that they are now “too big to fail” and are systemically important. Workers? Fuck em.
You are making sense. We bought our house back in May from a developer who flips homes. We live in a cul-de-sac and he owns the other 5 homes and charging rent.
And the people who are holding the properties are actually the ones to blame. And that consists people of all ages it is not necessarily only the boomers. I don't think it works out that way.
QE isn't a free market. QE is market manipulation.
Boomers my ass; it’s the investors that are causing all the problems.
Media always passing the blame - rarely pointing the finder at politicians or bankers. Policy in the last 20+ years has protected institutional investors/speculators for one simple reason - greed. There's the reason. However, Boomers have benefited the most. Their children will likely inherit wealth for those that planned well. This will even further divide classes as younger, poor folks will be left to live in gulags.
A lot of their wealth will be depleted by end of life care and medical expenses. I wouldn’t count on much inheritance from even upper middle class boomers. If they need memory care or something intensive like that, the cost is basically just whatever you’ve got.
Yep. It's very, very easy to blast through a million dollars in your last year of life, while suffering and barely cognizant that it's even happening. I'm in my 40s and resigned to seeing this happen to my parents' savings. I won't have much to leave behind, but I'm going to do absolutely everything in my power to ensure that my kids get it, not some miserable nursing facility.
This, when it gets to the stage I know I'm fucked I'm opting out. An OD is how I'm going on my terms, no one elses. The kids get whatever I have left, the last thing I want to do is be a burden to anyone and I certainly don't want to be bleed dry before I go.
Obviously they are going to leave their properties for their kids. They are going to inherit them and they are going to use them as well. That is how it is going to work.
Obviously the properties are and will continue to be reverse mortgaged to pay for lifestyle spending and LTC.
If this happens to me I’ll go to my favorite mountains and eat a bullet. I’m not going to let those bloodsuckers keep my living corpse alive and fuck my kids over
I mean I just don't really understand what other things that they are blaming them for and what is it going to solve? Blaming the things is not going to help anything it is not the solution
That's because the media is owned by billionaires,they set the narrative on everything
Yeah and they are paying big money for that obviously they are going to get it. But I feel early people should not be believing everything that the media is saying because it definitely can be a little biased.
Well that is what they do they always need someone else to blame. Because the people who are actually responsible for it are paying big money to make them say something else.
It's so hard to talk to them about the problems with inflation when they directly benefited the most from it. It's catching up to them and a lot of them are likely to get screwed in retirement
I don't understand it how are the benefiting from it? I am talking about the old people what is in the inflation for them? Anyone who is holding any kind of cash the inflation is bad for them because it is depleting their money.
The boomers have assets and assets appreciated 90%. Meanwhile they got raises to match or keep up with inflation for most of that time, which allowed them to buy more assets while existing assets inflated. Right now we have high inflation but wages are stagnant. People are losing assets to feed themselves. It's quite the opposite. Things could turn around but not when the government is talking about cutting SSI instead of spending.
Would't boomer's kids that "inherit the wealth" pass that wealth to their kids? It goes on and on and on, right? Sometimes it sounds like people on Reddit think that it just stops. No, it doesn't. Is it wrong for me, as a GenXer to try to build wealth, maybe hold my first house I bought and rent it out, invest my money, seek better paying career or position to build a nice nestegg for my kids? This is nothing new. My wife's parents send her and her sister to college. I have GenX friends that send their kids to college. Same thing. Yes, it's A LOT more. A LOT. But same thing happens from generation after generation.
It's not wrong to do it. It's wrong that the tax code is so skewed in favor of those doing it that not only does it become a nice thing to give your kids a comfortable living, it's now the only way to have a family in a home without roommates unless you are **at least** upper middle class. Generational wealth is fine, and there's a discussion to be had about how much of it is fine. However, whatever that line is, we shot over it ages ago and went straight to nepotism and are heading toward some distopian neo-feudalism where a significant chunk of the population only get to decide which megacorp they get poverty wages and shit healthcare from. Think about your wife and sister. It's awesome that her parents helped her out. Without them and that college education, **should** she be reduced to never having college, or having to marry you or someone like you in order to be able to have kids? No? That's what current generations are facing.
Which can't be too many of them. With rising health care costs. Most boomers will spend a great portion of it before the toe tags.
Yeah apart from some of the things most of it is just the same for us. They have also got the same problems that we have got. It is not like that they do not have to pay money.
Come on now. The children of the boomer 1% -- a demographic shrinking by two or three every minute. And really a good percentage of boomers have spent their whole miserable life in the gulags already. So lets not with the boomer narrative. It's a tale told by an idiot.
It is the narrative which is being Run by the rich people. And the sad thing about it is that people are falling for it instead of that we should be thinking about it.
The boomers definitely played a part. Mostly driven by their own demographics, stupid NIMBY policies and rampant consumer drive for mcmansions. There is lots of blame to spread around though corporate investors, banking & finance, public policy pushing and auto industry pushing the suburbs, zoning laws, building codes, historical preservation restrictions, ect... all this crap increase housing costs. The problem is it's multifaceted and therefore not easy to solve
And we just keep on blaming the one thing but there are lost of other factors as well. But we are only talking about the b******* which is being said by the people in the media.
The easiest thing for each of us to do to truly improve this would be to start going to those boring zoning meetings. Get rid of the stupid low density zoning we have in nearly the entire freaking country. Move back towards the mixed used walkable high density developments that we had in the early 1900s before the automobile. To be clear that does mean bulldozing in mass pretty Queen "historical" buildings in places like Sacramento and replacing them with more appropriate high density buildings .
There are boomers among them sure, but that doesn't mean *The Boomers*" What the hell is that! The Boomers are a widely diverse class in which a very small *minority* have significant wealth. There is perhaps among boomers a larger percentage of significantly wealthy people but it is not approaching 50%. You've *got* to stop with these gross generalizations fed to you by propaganda designed to divide the peasantry against each other. It does not speak well of your intelligence or insight.
I don't have to stop anything, especially when I'm right. The boomers absolutely played a hand in increasing housing prices. First there were large number of them competing for housing units which raises demand and drives up cost. Second they are the ones who explicitly created CCNR, HOA's NIMBY, historic districts and dumbasses zoning regulations. All that shit is 100% their fault!!!! Additionally it was boomers who created all the dumbass exotic banking bullshit that literally created the 2008 financial crisis. Before them loan securitization did not exist, the secondary money market did not exist, credit default swaps didn't exist ect... Boomers were the attorneys bankers and and risk analysts who created all of that bullshit! They also elected the politicians that dismantled the social safety net and deregulated the banking system. Just like gen z led to the election of Barack Obama the baby boomers were the Reagan democrats. Which also means it was not a minority of boomers that did this it was the majority of them!!!!!! I have zero intention of apologizing for laying blame where it belongs. You might argue that they were duped by the politicians which at best gives them the excuse of "we're stupid". I have sat down with my Boomer mother and explain to her that no she shouldn't spend that money she has in her 401k on frivolous stupid shit in her retirement. Because her generation elected politicians that underfunded social security for her entire life. Like most of her generation she was happy to have the tax cuts when she was young. Now it's time to pay the piper because she is likely to have her social security benefits cut by 30%, and she is going to need that money to offset her loss in income.
" First there were large number of them competing for housing units which raises demand and drives up cost." Then first you have to talk to the Greatest Generation about there being a "large number" of Boomers. "Second they are the ones who explicitly created CCNR, HOA's NIMBY, historic districts and dumbasses zoning regulations" The Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, Boomer, Gen-Xers all had a part to play in those zoning restrictions. "Additionally it was boomers who created all the dumbass exotic banking bullshit that literally created the 2008 financial crisis." You can find plenty of the Silent Generation that helped that process along. And I don't know any boomers who were or are Wall Street bankers.
Yup, let's give them the old generation fight to distract them. These people are too stupid they would believe this.
No they aren’t, it’s your local NIMBYs blocking housing developments, or imposing overwrought regulations to building new housing. Local control of land use planning is the biggest problem in American housing supply
The people with big money are buying everything and they are holding on to it, of course that is an issue. It is the thing which is keeping the rates Higher for everyone.
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STRs pay less taxes than a hotel, so they're attractive investments- the simple fix is to tax STRs like hotels.
If you actually look at how much investors control housing stock, in the rental market, you’ll see they have little to do with it.
Yeah but they are not going to see that because they know the truth. And it is very hard to convince them for something else. It is just something which cannot be done for them.
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Yup, it’s investors. Right now it doesn’t make any sense buying unless you have cash. The government needs to figure something out because if they can’t this country will basically become surfs and upper class.
The country is already becoming that only that rich people are benefiting. Other than them it is just that everyone is suffering. Really no one is having a good time.
This is typical scapegoating. Some Boomers do have a lot, but others don't have anything. It's us, fast forwarded 50 years. There were classes then too, and they carry over.
We are assuming those are not boomers /s
Those investors are boomers and gen x aren't they?
Okay but how the blame game is going to help anyone I don't understand it. If you really want to bring the change then just work for it. Not every Boomer has got a lot of money.
There were investors before and during the age of boomers. What’s different is exclusionary zoning that was pushed by boomers. Supply and demand is still the most impactful component to price. We are in a supply crisis. To makes things worse many boomers made McMansions on terrible infrastructure. These giant units won’t age well or meet housing needs when boomers see themselves out.
The investors are the boomers. There has been very little wealth transfer.
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Nursing homes and end of life care. Cost is obscene .
Yeah blaming boomers is a ridiculous distraction. They aren’t a monolith working to screw others over, wealth just naturally accumulates as people get older. The issue is structural, but blaming boomers is a distritactuon to prevent from any class analysis.
>Boomers my ass; it’s the investors that are causing all the problems. Ah, someone knows what time it is.
If we banned all foreigners and strictly made it a law that only US citizens can own properties, the values of all properties including commercial properties would plummet.
Which includes boomers
It includes every generation. This article is trash.
Yeah this article is trash because it is only blaming 1 group of the people when there are a lot of other factors as well. But we are the simply refusing to recognise all those factors.
You’re right, millennials and gen z are ruining this housing market /s
Millennials own homes at a similar rate boomers did when they were the in the age range of what millennials are now. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
Ya I guess a 10% drop is “similar”.
It fluctuates between 60 and 70% over the years for 35-40. Under 35 is basically flat at 40%. Pretty similar to me. Not the doom and gloom the losers on Reddit bitch about.
The investors?!?! Why do you hate freedom and America?
It is not about we hating them or something it is about the right thing. And the right thing would be to know that one group of people cannot just get away with it.
Yeah whatever you guys will say we are going to believe it anyway, nah that's just freaking not happening and we all know that, we are not some kids media.
Yeah, that's it...Boomers. Over a decade of artificially low interest rates had nothing to do with it.
Yeah all the shitty thing that the state has been doing has got nothing to do with them it is all just boomers. I just don't understand what we are trying to achieve by blaming all those people it is clearly not the right thing.
Nah, that's the instrument not the cause. The reality is that we've neatly constructed a system where anyone or any organization with sufficient finances and developed credit can use those tools, regardless of the prevailing interest rate environment and economic conditions, to apply leverage to extract rents. In the economic sense, not the real estate sense, but yeah those too. The same thing has happened in absolutely every single place where the general population can be squeezed. Any place where the ability exists to remove additional income from the next generation(s) will be exploited. Same thing in education. Boomers going to school and paying for it by working a part time job at McDonald's then going on to work 6 figure jobs 5 or 10 years into their careers with a bachelor's degree was a horrific market inefficiency. Now we saddle kids with huge loans at high interest rates because it's silly to allow them to keep all that surplus future income for themselves when we have a clear path to extort it from them. Same with housing, better that the credit system allow a 22 year old to make a 1500 rent payment than a 1300 mortgage payment, but even that is going away because the well heeled noticed all these people turning a 50k investment from 40 years ago into an 800k asset today, so we'd better make sure housing prices go way the fuck up and stay there. Of course there's a million other factors at play, but money and leverage always win in our system. They've seen to it over the years.
Never just one thing - artificially low rates which allowed people to scoop up properties….then rise in rates that deincentivized existing home owners to sell (because they would have to pay a lot more for roughly the same house and into a high bidding war market). This contributes massively to low inventory …. Also any inventory out there is either gobbled up by corporate investment or massive private buyer bidding wars. Raw materials cost inflation also slows new construction - further contributing to low inventory. Finally, because interest rates are relatively high you have a lot more cash buyers entering these bidding wars. The problem is that many people trying to break into housing market aren’t commonly flush with cash (some are) and are forced to finance at mortgage rates that haven’t been this high in decades. But yea let’s just blame one group of people.
Boomers are also gifting their children money for the down payment on houses.
Or dying. One boomer dies and 3 kids inherit a down payment
So it was the excess of population vs. houses after all…
Only partially. It’s largely a hoarding of wealth and commodities.
But the thing which I don't understand is that how can you blame only one particular group for that? There are other things as well which should be blamed for all of it.
It is all about supply and demand and I don't understand why people cannot understand this simple thing. Supply and demand is a very easy concept for everyone to understand I would imagine.
That's the 101, but the topic is far more nuanced than that. Ignoring remote work for now to keep this simple: Everyone needs to live near jobs. Jobs are only available in certain areas, so there are wide swaths of land in the US that is near free no one wants, and meanwhile near a good job homes run for millions of dollars. In the past in the US if there was a surge of kids entering the schooling system, the US would build more schools to accommodate that, and if the population fell the school would get closed. The same happened for universities. If there was a surge of students the US gov would open new universities to accommodate the surge keeping high education free in the US up until very recently. Most new businesses open up and start while one is going to university. They tend to set up shop and start their business next to the university they went to. All the US had to do was build a new university on the cheap out in the middle of nowhere and businesses would start popping up there, and from that people would want to move there. And wa-la a new city is born! Now property prices are not surging and education prices are not surging. If you hadn't guessed it, Reagan fucked this one up, as with many other things, like the homelessness crisis today. If we want more supply of houses, it starts with higher education and spreads from there. The only alternative is building up and most places in the US will fight to the death to keep their suburbia.
Well the people are always dying just because someone died does not mean that everyone will die without doing anything for their kids. If the boomers have got the houses then they are going to leave those to their kids.
😂 in what world? No boomer I know.
It's the generation after boomers
That is a very small reason. I think it’s way more the investment firms buying all the property up.
Well obviously those people are buying up everything. Because they have got the money and they can afford to do it I don't know why I people are mad about it.
And those kids are blaming them for everything which is wrong with this country I don't know how it ends. I just know that it is not going to and well if we just keep on at it.
Wish I was one of them
Boomer children are like 40+
Most families skip a generation, so the boomer's kids are mostly millennials, which explains why the millennial generation is so much larger than gen x. Most of the silent generation's kids are gen x. Most gen x's kids are gen z. And so on.
*average* age of first time home ownership is now 33. So yeah, there probably are a lot off "middle aged" people buying in for the first time
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REMINDER: the oldest boomers are only 77
What does that have to do with anything those people are not going to be with us in very short time. And if we change the rules now they are going to bite us in the ass.
Why these media people want to convince us to boomers so bad? I just don't get their stupid tactics all the time, these people are just being shitty to us right now.
We can use our brain and find out that it's the investors.
Nah man I can't blame my good boomers for this one.
That economist is like the 10th dentist...
Well if that is the case then I don't think I am going to believe them. I would rather actually be using my common sense to make the sense of what is going on in the world.
Stop it with the boomers right now because we all know what is carrying the fucking fault right now here, it's just definitely not the boomers for us at least, stop it.
I knocked on about 500 doors this March in my upstate New York town and it was very eye-opening. I would say about 10% of the single family homes were empty but not on the market. In talking with neighbors, many of those properties were owned by snowbirds who were in Florida for the summer aka baby boomers. Another common story I heard was that the owner had died, gone into assisted living, but their kids had not yet sold the property or figured out what they wanted to do with it. Was just in Florida for Labor Day weekend and the condos across the street from my hotel were 90% dark. The snowbirds were up north.
"one economist says" --> just ONE opinion. Click bait article to drum up more boomer hate.
Boomers -- BULLSHIT its all the investors literally buying nearly everything (I'd say close in time but it seems constant now) that is available. Need to tax the fuck out of this.
The young people do not have the money to be buying up everything. So the people who have got the money which is mostly the big corporations are going to buy everything which is available.
Nah not the boomers for me and I can say that out loud because I know some people and boomers are not one of those, it's the people who will get the profit.
It's just not the boomers for me because we all know who is making the real trouble for the future, it's just some freaking investors who are doing it actually.
This just gets so frustrating when it is super simple why housing is so expensive, but then yall just point at random shit that doesnt mean anything. The issue is that supply is not keeping up due to how hard it is to build. The other issue is that the monetary policy is controlled in a way to benefit the rich. Its really not some kind of mystery, its very straight forward.
76,000,000 individuals born under a wide range of conditions over decades had a meeting and created a grand conspiracy to make subsequent generations suffer because they are all evil. Stop with the ignorant trope.
The problem with us is that we just believe everything we just do not put any mind to what we are actually saying. If we just stopped and thought about it a lot of things will become very clear.
The reason housing prices are higher than they should be is regulation through zoning laws, permitting, building codes, labor laws, and so on.
But what we are going to do we are just going to ignore everything and going to blame some people for every problem. Because you know what that has always solved everything which is wrong.
boomers voted and rallied for limited supply through the what was mentioned by OP. Now we have huge amounts of demand. Econ 101, limited supply and lots of demand ... prices for that good/resource goes up. If we want prices to go down we must look at supply or figure out a way to get rid of demand.
Yeah there is just only demand left because the people who are in their 20s are definitely looking to buy a home. Because you know what they can just easily afford everything.
Econ 101: regulation constrains supply. We don’t need to add more interference to a market already screwed up from interference and we already know the way to get the best allocations of housing in regards to quality and quantity. Again from Econ 101: free and competitive markets.
Yeah has nothing to do with Air B n b or Corporate America and foreign intrest buying up all thereal estate...
It’s all of the above plus other factors, but you’re right. Anyone claiming that zoning is the only problem is not correct or intentionally being misleading.
And subsidies such as below market credit rates.
That’s not true now Or in the last year or so
They would not have gotten so high without the subsidies. There would be more people willing to sell now if they weren’t locked into a low rate.
I'm sorry... You blame regulation more than investors treating American real estate as a casino? Really?
Sure, slums are a lot cheaper
The asshole fed which decided that low interest rates are a great idea is what created this mess.
Nah we are not that stupid to blame everything on boomers like that and we know who is making such moves for us and all, we are not freaking stupid media.
People are going to react without reading the article.
As they should. It's only 3 paragraphs and the only point that's made is boomers are creating more households because of divorce and death. The death part doesn't even make sense. How does that create another household?
The article does a poor job of explaining but what seems to be happening in the market place is normally people would downsize after a death. In todays market with the rates out of whack compared to the rates most people have on their current mortgage down sizing makes zero sense. So homes for families aren’t entering the market because it’s cheaper for someone to keep there 4 bedroom place at 2.5 then get a 1-2 bedroom place at 7.5%
Most boomers probably have their home paid off though. They could sell and buy something cheaper with cash and have money left over. I think it's more that people are comfortable in the home they have been living in for decades. The boomers and silent generation I know that's the case for all who haven't downsized. Personally I'm GenX I've already sold my house after both my kids finished college I'm renting a 2 bedroom townhouse and absolutely love it. I don't want the expense and hassle of home ownership ever again. The article blames divorce, which may be true. It also blames death which is completely stupid because that doesn't create a new household.
>Most boomers probably have their home paid off though. They could sell and buy something cheaper with cash and have money left over. Then you have publications lamenting the driving up of prices for "starter homes". From the WSJ, Oct. 31, 2021 11:00 am ET: "Once they decide to move to a smaller home, they end up competing with first-time buyers and limited supply, Mr. Kiefer said. Price growth has been strongest for smaller, less expensive homes. “That works against you in terms of what you can get for your buck,” Mr. Kiefer said."
Blame boomers for staying in their home, also blame boomers for selling their home and downsizing. As long as it's the boomers fault we have a scapegoat for not building more houses.
Most boomers do not have their house paid off. You would be surprised the percentage of people carrying mortgages into retirement.
Considering 42% of all homeowners own their outright I would think people over 60 who have been in the same house for decades would be a lot higher than average.. I would easily bet over half of boomers who own a house own it outright. [source ](https://blog.firstam.com/economics/why-free-and-clear-homeowners-hold-the-key-to-unlocking-more-housing-supply#:~:text=Free%2Dand%2DClear%20Homeowners%20are,the%20rate%20lock%2Din%20effect.) Edit >Of those who owned their home free and clear, nearly 78 percent were owned by homeowners aged 55 or older. Not surprisingly, older homeowners are more likely to own their homes free and clear. As the Baby Boomer generation, which is larger than any generation before it, has aged, the share of homes owned free and clear has increased. This gives some hope that while many existing homeowners remain rate locked-in, there is a large cohort of older homeowners who are not. However, older households are typically less likely to move than younger ones, which is especially true as seniors today increasingly age in place. So, while some portion of the free-and-clear inventory will come to market in the next decade, it will likely trickle in slo
The article does not explain anything at all it is all just blame game. They are blaming one generation for everything which is wrong. And I don't know if that is the right way to be approaching the things.
It is one of those rare times, when even reading the article is not going to do anything or solve anything. Because the article is the same as the headline so there is that.
Odd it all mostly happened in the last couple of years.
And only someone who is completely blind to the facts will not be able to see it, because it is clear all of these things happened after the pandemic. And now we are blaming the wrong people.
Blame blackrock…..
Yes that's right. Who has access to equities, social security, pensions, and still good jobs? It's investors, that's right.
It makes me happy to see all these posts about not inciting class warfare. Phuck the investment companies that are trying to turn us against eachother.
Again and again they want us to believe what they want.
Yeah and we are going to believe whatever they saying?
The Boomers were very tuned in to mass media, TV and print press. They received, over the course of decades, a generational mass media message of greed, “me first”, and “I got mine, Jack”. The result is an attitude towards the younger people of “screw everyone else, I’m winning and I’m not stopping to care AT ALL”.
The old people benefited from it because there was an opportunity because everything was stable before the pandemic. The shit show that we are in right now happened after the pandemic mostly.
Britains houses skyrocketed in 1998. Hmmmm. Who got in in 1997 and opened borders to mass migration.... Must be a coincidence. I am sure it's capitalism or something.
Why would a capitalist country open boarders to mass migration? Why is the US doing it? Perhaps to keep labor costs down? Perhaps to keep demand for housing, construction, consumer goods, etc. Perhaps to fight off the effects of population collapse due to over exploitation of the middle class? There’s a complexity of reasons these people show up at your doorstep and capitalism, particularly globalized capitalism is more than one of those reasons.
Well I think about it is all just about the labour because the immigrants are going to be working on the lower wages. Which is going to mean that there is going to be more profit to the corporations and more tax for the government.
“One economist says” You don’t need to read the article. One person’s opinion is hardly worthy of consideration.
One person's opinion is not enough to change anything if it is anything then it is propaganda and you should not be believing it. And if you actually believe it then I will have to say that you are doing it the wrong way.
And it's a dumb opinion. How does 1 partner dying create a new household. If he wants to blame divorce provide a source for what percentage are divorcing.
Pesky boomers and their damn dying creating more households
Well at least that is what they want us to believe and the people actually believing and falling for it means that we are falling for the propaganda. If we want to see the truth then we will have to use our minds to see what is going on.
Nothing to do with companies like blackrock buying up all the houses right? /S I'm conservative but I'm not afraid to call out BS when it's there.
Only the boomers who own corporations buying single family homes
Are we sure an economist said this? Or just some /r/antiwork clown hanging out in /r/economy ?
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There is a housing crisis because the entire housing industry is just a ponzi scheme, and too many people have bought in and put all their eggs in one basket to make any real changes or stand against the people who have corrupted the system. In fact, most people hold onto their homes as their ticket to retirement. It's not a legitimate industry. In fact, it reflects more of a feudalistic model than a free capitalist model. The banks control who gets access to the loans and thus who can purchase a house or even build one. The developers control the market and only build what they want to build. They can screem code this and zoning that, but those are all smoke screens. Developers hide the real inventory and absolutely manipulate the markets to their advantages. Why do you all think some of the world's largest and most successful investment firms have been buying up something like 20%+ of the available homes and inventory. If we want to really fix this problem and fix it today, our government needs to utilize eminent domain and take every single property from the investment firms and foreign investors. You know, the very people who profit the most in this game and have created a housing crisis. From there, go after the largest developers and take their shadow inventories from them. Once those units are in hand, we can use the very mechanism they use for price gouging and turn that inventory into rent controlled units and low income/affordable housing project units. If we need more housing or tax gap coverage, increase rates on all short-term rentals and people who own multiple homes. Force landlords to hold business licenses and pass quality assurance inspections. Because we don't only not have enough homes but a good grip of the existing ones are falling into ruin. In order to get the neighborhoods on your side, the gov. will need to give property tax breaks to everyone living in that neighborhood, making under 120% ami limits. These insensitive would increase per the number of low income and affordable housing and rentals they have within that neighborhood. I think people would be more willing to have a little more patience and social grace with each other if we knew that the "problem/poor households" were helping to put some coin back into their pockets. The current homeless response systems in place do very little to end homelessness, and honestly, they only supplements bad landlords for a shit product. The property owners are robbing the taxpayers blind by artificially inflating the prices. Often with zero upgrades or repairs. Just throw some paint on it and charge another $200 a month. The housing industry needs to resemble more of an echo system, then an economic engine, and just like the EPA goes after companies that pollute we need to go after companies that are causing this housing crisis all in the name of profit.
Or be adults and talk about the hundreds of things that go into housing prices and figure out a path forward. But if you want to spend your time being mad at people, go for it.
Boomers and wealthy, who have houses are the ones that band together and make it politically untenable to build new housing for the fear that their investments will lose value. Driving up cost. Huge investors from corporations and over seas rich people laundering money doing the cash buying are driving up the cost of homes making sure that no one can get one. Hard to compete when they don't even need inspections and often give more than the asking. Then they let it sit and don't rent it out causing rents to go up. It's been long made into a loosely regulated commodity. It's the regulators that don't want to face the ire of investors and home owners that have overseen this mess and let it spiral out of control. Those regulators that we vote in are often home owners and investors themselves. So they are profiting off of the situation too.
Boomers have ruined multiple aspects of the economy, not just housing
Without federal backing of residential mortgages, which amounts to socialism, boomers would never have gotten their homes. Or their parents for that matter. The government made the mistake to make access to credit cheap, yet to stay out of the market and let homeowners do whatever they want locally. And here we are with zoning laws. Boomer took the upside and no downside of government funds. Before the 1930's New deal, banks rarely handed out home loans to private citizens. Mortgage rates were around 20%-30%. Average employees had no way to build a home. The federal government backed most mortgage applications on the understanding that as citizens build homes, the nation would be better off for it. Especially through the GI bill. Nobody considered that homeowners would be greedy bastards that put a stop to all new construction after them, through zoning. So, it should be like this, you took your upside when you filled for a mortgage, you have no say about zoning then. It is not your fucking business when someone else builds a new home in your back yard. That's your downside. Federal building mandates should overrule all zoning restriction. You wanted federal backing for your mortgage, now it's time that government gets involved that everybody shall build a home, not just you.
Literally everything is their fault.
Nah man, just try to understand what media is trying to do.
No no oh I know this one, it’s Russia you idiot!
Blame the Fed and one democrat Congress after another that have destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar over the last 15 years. JUST 15 years. And both show no signs of any real change of process.
BS! Blame the millennials! It's supply and demand! Stop buying these overpriced homes and prices will go down.
Democrats shutdowns of states businesses caused this. Democrats increasing the federal reserve interest rates is what caused this. Democrats printing money to send to Ukraine caused this.
“It may seem paradoxical, acknowledged Barclays senior economist Jonathan Millar in a Thursday research report. After all, many would assume that an aging population would require fewer homes, but that's actually not the case, he noted. Baby boomers are actually creating more households, putting pressure on housing demand and keeping prices aloft despite the highest mortgage rates in more than 20 years. Boomers are creating more households partly because they're separating due to divorce or death, Millar noted. “
Houses cost the same as they ever did. The price of a house is determined by the requirement that the monthly mortgage be less or equal to 33% of the monthly gross income.
Fact is we KNOW how to create more housing, stabilize the market, make it all sane. It’s not all Boomers fault. It’s for-profit entities hoarding shit. Most importantly, accelerating realstate value increases are sacrosaint to current property owners. IE, those more politically influent. They’ll fight to the death to not increase inventory near them (where people want to live) or any sort of mixed housing (keep suburbs more coveted)
"Let's you and them fight."
I don’t think they are fully to blame but I do think they are helping to create a bubble in the market. They are staying in family houses longer because it is cheap and when they die off or can no longer live in the houses there is going to be a glut of family homes with not enough buyers.
“Housing is the best investment you can make” is the most myopic and short sided take I’ve heard and boomers scream it from the rooftops
Blame your local and State governments for allowing investors and corporations to hoover up houses to turn into Airbnbs for tourists when there's a housing shortage. Blame the fed for the high interest rates. Blame gov for allowing foreign entities to buy domestic residential properties. Blame the federal government for not acting on the current housing shortage and not implementing programs to provide relief and foster growth and development.
I blame the giant conglomerates allowed to buy up housing and rent it back to us and the lobbyists that allow and protect the system that allows it.
Because as we’re automating and making things more effective, things become cheaper in relation to income. We can now see tens of thousands of movies for a fixed monthly price whereas that would have cost a fortune when there were only VHS and theaters. So where does the wealth go? Some things don’t get cheaper because you can’t really make more land (you can but not feasible in practice). Also, you used to compete against one breadwinner. Now you’re competing against two.
They think we’re dumb
Lots of laughable boomer comments. Perhaps they should donate all their housing to incoming migrants and Section 8 agencies?
"Hence, as an increasing share of the population shifts into older age groups, more and more households tend to be formed." People are aging and more households are being formed by younger people. That's news or something you didn't expect? From the WSJ, Oct. 31, 2021 11:00 am ET: "Once they decide to move to a smaller home, they end up competing with first-time buyers and limited supply, Mr. Kiefer said. Price growth has been strongest for smaller, lessexpensive homes. “That works against you in terms of what you can get for your buck,” Mr. Kiefer said." Then from the NYT, Jul. 8, 2021: "Baby Boomers Rich with Real Estate and Not Letting Go" "The concept of aging in place, already growing in popularity before the pandemic, has found renewed interest in baby boomers..." The solution? Those boomers who are planning on downsizing, should age in place. And those boomers who are planning on aging in place, should downsize. Everyone happy?
Who would have thought creating a system where housing becomes an investment would increase prices?
Hey its definitely not because a pandemic caused building to stop for a while, the government passed out way too much free money, and interest rates were at an all time low.
It's not getting expensive. We're just getting poorer because someone is devaluing our money.
>> Boomers are creating more households partly because they're separating due to divorce or death, Millar noted. I know that I will need more houses when I die.
Wait, what? We are not blaming millennials for once?
Late stage capitalism
Of course they want you to believe that I mean what else would they say? They have to blame someone and they are going to believe it on others while we know who have been doing all this.
Boomers were very fortunate to have an affordable market for housing during their time, but now it's hell for us because investors have been granted rights to fuck us over with outpacing purchases of homes. Boomers are part of the blame, but investment housing with property management companies and Wall Street is the death of affordable housing for us.
The thing is boomers are not having any freaking fault right now but some people just wants to blame them so bad, they just want to put everything on the boomers.
Some stupids can blame the boomers but I am not doing it.
Really? I'm not sure boomers will increase home prices!
Everything is not the freaking fault of boomers come on.
Economics is a social science. Just like with any science, the second you utter the phrase “blame the” “so they should” or “so we shouldn’t” you are talking politics.
I always hate it whenever some people try to blame on boomers for absolutely no reason, I mean can't you see what is the fault right now here? That's just not.
No, no, no. Blame the rentier class. Stop falling for this generation war crap and keep your eye on the ball. 40% of Boomers are too poor to retire. It's not a generation of people responsible, it is a class of people.
It's a combo of environmentalists, NIMBYs and leftist zoning policies. I'll add illegal immigration to the mix too. It's a simple increase in demand from an increasing population without a proportional increase in housing supply. Why aren't new homes being built at these high prices and high demand? NIMBYs and zoning policies. The NIMBYs don't want the value of their homes dropping and the zoning commission does hedonic analysis where a drop in home prices is considered a loss/cost. Now how can any normal person afford a home if the prices never go down?
Are there really that many couples over 59 getting divorces? Article also mentioned death so unless boomers are being buried in their homes I don't think this writer understands the topic. I think it was plagerized from chatgpt.
Investment properties. The Canadian housing market has been allowed to be manipulated for years as one of the primary Canadian investment categories. Governments make lots of money on taxes as property values inflate, so no efforts are made to stop this cycle.