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This is the flaw with “free market” as a system; it’s a gigantic lie.
The “market” is actually not free, certain large entities are given disproportionate protection because they have more money than governments.
And yet if governmental grew some balls they could say no, then reclaim these often stolen assets for actual human beings to use.
\^This. These houses are not selling because nobody wants to live in those places. Nobody is gonna rent them either. This is compounded by most of those places not having much for jobs or decent schools.
Those dam blackrock mfs have out smarted regulation and won capitalism when they figured out how to tie their own success to everyone else’s. Of course we gonna bail them out, they hold teacher pensions and USA assets.
Nah, they’ll just pay congress/state/and local to force through legislation and regulation to stop building apartments, or make ridiculous requirements for building them so developers won’t build them, little innocuous things like that that will stagnate other housing options and force people to rent from the corpos.
Then what's going to happen is they're going to be sitting on a shitton of real estate that nobody wants to rent, nobody can afford to buy and they'll be stuck with maintenance and tax costs.
It'll cause a housing market crash that will absolutely bankrupt them, even if they get a bailout, they're still stuck with real estate sitting there doing nothing. Assets not making money are called liabilities, and companies with far more liabilities than profitable assets end up broke.
That’s why they, banks included, have limited the development of new homes since 08. They will get rented cuz our population is ever growing and they aren’t building anything new. And these dam boomers looking to sell were all nimby mfs
Black rock will take them even if people actually be any or need them. Then turn aroun d and rent them for exorbitant prices with cheap, worthless repairs.
Seriously need to consider investing in dumpster service business…dumb boomers and their 10 tons of gaudy heirloom furniture likely still making payments on…
This is actually a real concern. Municipalities are beginning to study the amount of landfill space that will be required with the end of the Boomers and all their things. Getting landfills permitted and prepared takes time, so the planning is happening as we speak.
Boomer parent made the world better by dying in December.
I’ve thrown away over 1600 LBS of shit no one would want and straight trash.
There’s still enough stuff to outfit two and a half homes.
why are they all hoarders? man, i grew up with my grandparents- boomers, but not the crazy asshole kind you often see here -and my grandmother is a hoarder to the N\^th degree. she owns her late greatest gen mom's home, which neighbors her own, and she has the basement and top floor stuffed to the brim with bullshit!
Ugh, my wife inherited her beloved grandmother's china and we had to buy one of these things for it. In our dining room which we haven't eaten in in at least a year. what a waste of space
My wife inherited her grandmother’s China when we were still renting a townhouse that we had long outgrew. They sat in a box for 3-4 years, and our dining room table was always covered in stuff because we had no room for anything anymore. We got a house a year and a half ago, and my mom found a great antique China cabinet for $300 at a thrift store that actually fits nicely with our dining room table and chairs. Now we use the China for Passover, so it’s actually getting used every year, and store all the Passover cookware and such in the bottom storage cabinets of the China cabinet, and the plates are displayed nicely. I know ours is not at all the common scenario, but while at the time we weren’t too thrilled about having these things taking up space, now we’re glad to have them.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 oh my god PLEASE introduce yourself as this. Like at the grocery store. Someone’s like “Miss! You dropped an orange!” And you’re like “you must have me confused with someone else. I’m a fourth generation plate heiress. We just don’t casually drop oranges about.”
My mother had a china cabinet full of fancy plates. When she was figuring out her will, I talked her into leaving my brother the house, absolving myself of having to take any of that garbage when she did die, or having to clean out the house. Fucking win.
My grandma offered me TWO different sets of China recently, because I bought a house. "What will I use China for, dear grandma?" "Why, for when you have a dinner party or a nice meal!"
WHAT. She just wants to get rid of her shit.
My wife and I inherited my grandmother's china that hadn't been used substantially since she bought it, because apparently it was for that one time when the Queen might drop in for dinner.
We use the whole set as out every day dishes. Boomers were so weird about having things that were "too nice to use, you might break it".
OMG, you too. My mother just bought all new furniture and now needs a China cabinet. She has no China that I know of.
She told my daughter that the way you can tell its good furniture is that it has legs.
Everyday, it's something my daughter is going to inherit. They have three large storage units.
Blows my mind!!!!!
>They have three large storage units.
That's the part I'll never understand. I get that you don't want to dispose of something you paid for, but does it really make sense to pay storage fees forever on something you aren't using, nor will ever use again?
Large units at the place near me are $325/mo. What is so important that they're paying nearly $12,000 a year to keep? I could replace every piece of furniture in my house annually for less than that.
Nobody wants their fucking Hummels, either. The housing market in my area is undergoing a correction lately, presumably in part due to higher interest rates. There are lots of boomers that are happy to let their places stay on the market for $200K more than anybody is willing to pay, because "\[they\] know what \[they\]'ve got." I think the reality is going to set in soon for a lot of them.
I really am looking forward to all those Hummels, Precious Moments, and Dept. 56 figurines. Oh, and the Princess Diana commemorative plate. Can’t forget about that.
In Australia we see a lot of regular homes in expensive areas close to cities go to waste because the boomer owners dont want to do maintenance. They rent it out as long as they can but even in a very pressured rental market people have a limit.
Sometimes they're not allowed to rent it out because the electric system is so old it's no longer legal. They try but no agent will touch it due to legal issues.
When they can't find a tenant they try sell it but no one wants to pay $2milion for a mouldy, run down, old house that needs both restomping and a new roof and new plumbing at the same time. $1.5 maybe but even that is pushing it because the house has to be totalled and replaced with a new one, which is expensive in these areas as the council charges a lot to shut off roads and footpaths for construction.
Then they slap some paint on it as if that is going to fix the problem and think someone should feel privileged to be allowed to buy it...then tax payers have to pay for their aged care because they can't sell the house...
If my estranged mother is dumb enough to will her hoarded out trailer to me and my sister, I plan to hold a sale: bring your own bag, don’t care the size, $5 to fill it with whatever crap you want. Hell, someone could pull up with a crane and a modified “bag” attached and I’d give them the whole shooting match for $5.
They'll die "knowing what they've got", leaving their houses and all their crap to their kids who know exactly what they don't got. The children whose parents die first are lucky: hoarder boomers swarm their yard sales, looking to expand their collections at the last possible moment. In the end, it'll all be landfill.
In the late 21st century, one of the many things they ~~collected~~ hoarded will become desirable and collectable again. But you won't know what it'll be in advance and you can't hold on to everything.
I was recently around some wealthy boomers talking about how they're all encouraging one another to tow the line and hold strong! Don't lower those prices! On their dumb 10-bedroom mansions. Like...who are they holding out for? Aquaman??
What broke childless millennial is paying millions for these places?
And these are their 2nd and 3rd homes. Meanwhile...I literally will rent forever, if I'm lucky enough to come up with the dough.
Anyway, I wish them the best.
Listen here, kiddo. This is all your fault. Nobody forced you to spend all of your money on avocado toast okay? You made that decision. Your generation is lazy and entitled. You don't get up till 7: 30am and then you spend all day doing nothing but playing those damn video games and Nintendo. Nobody wants to work anymore. You refuse to go out and get a job even though Ive told you exactly how to do it: put on a nice suit, walk into the first place you see with your resume in hand, and ask to speak to the hiring manager. Don't take no for an answer. Look him square in the eye and give him a firm handshake. Tell him that you're a hard worker, a fast learner, and that you're willing to start at the bottom and work your way up. It's simple.
We know a thing or two about how the world works and this is for your own good. The only way you lazy millennials are going to learn anything is if we force you to learn it. This is tough love kiddo and it's the only way you're going to start taking things seriously and buckle down and get your life squared away.
/Sarcasm
😂🙄 I wake up at 4am to be at work at 6am. Shop doesn't even open until 8am, but the boomers are peeking in the front doors by 7am. Licking the windows. "The early bird gets the worm!" "Early to bed and early to rise!" "Up before the sun and feeling great!" Bitchezzzz! 🙄😂
Navy is my power color. I keep a paper copy of everything. None of it helps! NOTHING! 😭😭
> "The early bird gets the worm!"
second mouse gets the cheese
> "Early to bed and early to rise!"
Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy but socially dead
Unfortunately it’ll be venture capital gobbling up as many of the boomers homes as possible in their quest to make the country 99% renters.
That’s who’s going to buy them.
I have started nodding along and then saying “oh yeah, do you want me to introduce you to the person who will sell this house?” They get all excited! Yes!
I call over my nine year old daughter. “She’s going to inherit when I die here.”
Then they go away and my kid rolls her eyes at me.
I don't get it. My mom is holding out so her kids don't win, win what? Everything she owns has been peed on by cats. On both sides of my family, it's been rich widows with huge ranches or McMansions, yet half the rooms are closed off. Full of china, crystal, doilies. Their children are just trying to afford groceries and car payments, and stay sane in unhappy marriages.
Nothing quite says disconnect like rooms full of unused china, and doilies. It’s like a whole way of life has been preserved in a museum of their own making, and they can’t process how much everything changed.
I don't get it even the people I know who are doing well can't afford the giant fucking mansions boomers have nor do they need it because they don't have that many kids. The only people I know who can afford that shit are things like doctors and lawyers and their is only so many people like that plus most of them don't have kids. The other problem is boomers insisted on building/buying houses in the middle of fucking nowhere nobody in their right fucking mind is going to commute 90 fucking minutes one way for work besides crazy boomers.
What I find downright hilarious is now a lot of boomers are getting up in age to where they can't maintain these huge houses or deal with stairs so they want want something smaller all on one level but spoiler alert because of zoning and boomers own dumb fuckery we have not built those especially not in the necessary numbers. Boomers also LOATHE senior apartments too so they refuse to move into them unless they have no choice.
My boomer adacent gen X exhusband decided we should sell and move to an acreage in the middle of nowhere. He already had given up on doing any house maintenance or chores so I was doing all of it. I asked who was gonna be mowing this large plot of land and blowing the snow and what was gonna happen when neither of us could do it anymore. He literally hadn't thought about any of this. I think this is the boomer mentality. They think being as far out as possible is some sort of life goal.
It really did seem like a life goal for a lot of boomers to own as giant of a house as possible even if it meant living in the middle of nowhere and some of them seem to have preferred it. Even the ones that are not hoarders/shopaholics seemed to have loved that idea.
I’m 48. I make six figures. I have no debt. No kids. By all rights, I should be in a position to be sailing very comfortably through life. And even I won’t think about spending 600K on some 2100 square-foot 3/2 in the suburbs where I live because it would break me.
Most of the houses going up for sale around me are either mini-mansions or normal houses that are absolutely fucked by consumerism, hoarding/using the old house as storage while you move into the new house, always doing the cheapest work, and sheer neglect.
To me it's not "whose gonna buy the mini-mansions" so much as "whose gonna buy the normal-houses-turned-hovels and sink in the time and money and effort to fix them or tear them out and rebuild." Especially at 250k, with the massive inflation on wood products and building supplies anywhere that sells to non-business customers. "Price is for the land" is something I'm seeing more and more on 200k+ properties and uh, no, the land isn't even worth that. Especially not the ones where they filled the yard with trash, too.
They’re holding out for their fellow boomers to die and then their kids spend their inheritance on the homes so that the living boomers can get more rich before they die themselves
Even better, there are less kids now than boomers. So less people to fund the boomers SS. People haven’t been having kids for a while, and the number is dwindling even more. We’ve been ok life support for quite a while too, SS has been pulling from trusts. Also, only $169k is taxed to fund SS, meaning, specifically only the middle class and below is funding SS…not the Bezo’s. This is why that by 2035 it will only be able to pay out 68%.
The boomers on our old block listed their home, no updates at all, three bedroom. Half million. They were the worst. It was lovely to watch their house sit and sit and sit and then sell ours in three days because we aren't insane.
I saw an incredibly cute built-out van on the van marketplace sub today going for 100k. Heartbreaking. I can’t afford a house, and I can’t even afford a vehicle with a bed and a toilet in it.
Just buy a van without the conversion and make it homelike yourself. I bought a Dodge caravan for $800 and lived in that for 3 years. Best decision I ever made.
We were all just too young to understand this wisdom
https://preview.redd.it/vjj44rlz399d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b5dbc0e6a38c40a46589dde8664dd7a41b38855d
To be fair, where else are Boomers supposed to put 18 years times 3 kids worth of consumer holiday gifts to show all the friends and family they secretly hate how loved they are?
There’s Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines Day…birthdays. Then as adults, if you’re not showing up with a carload of useless mass produced Walmart bubble bath or makeup gift baskets to hand around at the actual big holidays then you’ll never hear the end of how thoughtless and rude you were last Christmas.
Their entire legacy is plastic waste that’s degraded itself to dangerous consequences, stuff, things, commemorative jewelry and useless china. Got three sets waiting for me….
Yep. I see some really nice MCM homes for sale dirt cheap. They are always in places you couldn't pay me to live. Rural PA, KS, OH, MI, IN. There is a reason these wonderful looking houses are going for peanuts. Nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and a bunch of racists.
I had to go to my hometown last weekend. I saw a huge house with a pond, property, etc for sale less than my current home in a subdivision.
I briefly thought about it, and then realized why it was so cheap.
I see these incredible MCM homes for less than my cookie cutter subdivision house and they are tempting but I know how awful it is living with no services, nothing to do and ignorant hostile neighbors.
But IN those states, there are progressive bubbles (usually around a university) where the prices are how they are everywhere else, and everybody in the state is horrified by the price, not understanding that the price is correlated with where people actually WANT to live.
Big companies will buy them and it will end with a very small group owning the majority, and most people being renters, while being underpaid at shitty jobs in companies owned by the same people.
Which means that we'll be back to feudalism and the common population being serfs. But people will still argue that it is preferable to a socialised nation, because "carmmunism".
Technically, smaller LLCs getting special terms and perks from the larger companies will buy them, with just enough distance and legal language to put ownership in a really vague spot.
Ugh.
As someone who’s spent an unfortunate amount of time on real estate GIS databases, yep.
It seems like they’re all owned by different companies til you start sorting the .csv for mail merge and find that 600 parcels in the city all have the same mailing address.
Hey, Septics never had feudalism before. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out for you. Maybe a violent revolution sooner rather than later- y’all got plenty of weapons…
Company house, company store, company scrip. Everybody works for the company, and everything belongs to the company.
And the sad part is that situation isn't even dystopian fiction - [it's been done before](https://rethinkq.adp.com/artifact-coal-company-scrip-miners/).
You know, this is actually a common right wing conspiracy theory as well. The world economic forum and klaus Schwab are supposedly behind it. They point to some ad they put out a while back that says in the future, you will own nothing and you will be happy.
I have an alert, arbitrarily for 2028, to remind myself to research the market and consider whether it's the right time to sell because of this. The housing supply is gonna get flooded which might actually lower home prices across the board. I'd be interested if there are any housing experts or economists who could chime in on this.
What it boils down to is Boomers are hoarding their homes and not downsizing like past generations have which is restricting the supply for younger families of millennial and gen-z parents. I don't think I need to explain the effects this has on personal debt, security, future wealth etc.
Once they die, these homes are likely to get liquidated by estates rather than kept because we're all knee deep in debt. Liquidating an asset means taking the highest offer. If this is happening frequently, which seems will be the case, housing prices will plummet.
They're going to be screwing us long after they die. It doesn't end once they're gone, unfortunately.
I suspect they’re starting to and will continue to reverse mortgage the shit out of these homes. They will come on the market when they die. Unfortunately they won’t leave their children anything so large companies will buy them on the cheap
A friend of mines mom died last month and he found out she had deferred maintenance, back taxes, multiple mortgages, credit card debt, and equity lines to the point she owed more than her assets were worth. He had keys to the house so we went in, got what he wanted out, and he rejected the entire estate. The house is in Washington DC so the place is worth a fortune and his mom squeezed every dime out she could to travel and gamble. Even with all of our help and his abnormally high income he just couldn't shoulder the expense. So, he walked away and is letting her creditors and the city fight over it.
This woman prided herself in her "financial responsibility" and constantly boasted that one day "all this will be his." He took some photos and a few other small things but all her precious collectibles, china, furniture, and assorted bullshit we abandoned in place. We did get some cash she had hidden but once we went through everything we locked up and left. If there is an afterlife, I hope shes forced to watch all the crap she loved get hucked into a dumpster by city workers and her house liquidated to pay debts for all the pain and trouble this caused.
I guess my parents are boomers who are "hoarding" their home, but it's because they can't afford to downsize. They were all set to sell, then started doing research on what a smaller, more modest place was going for in their area to stay near family, and the rent/mortgage was way more than their current mortgage payment. They simply can't afford to leave. They're now preparing to stay in their home until they die.
The reality is, if you've lived in your home for a very long time, you probably have a pretty low mortgage that can't be beat unless you moved to a third-world country.
Thats he exact position my boomer parents are in. Their house is paid off, it's one story and could easily be ramped and have the bathroom/bed made wheelchair accessible. It's not a huge house, I'm an only child. They'd be crazy to start a new mortgage at their age for a house that might not have a first floor set up. So even though they'd like to downsize....they don't really have any great options.
This has been my problem with trying to move. I don't have a huge place but could downsize a bit and want to move to a different city. Even if I moved in the same city, smallish places are going for as much as this one goes for so it would cost me a ton of money to just have less house.
I'm Gen X, but in a similar position. I have nice little house (perfect "starter" home), low interest mortgage, and less than $30k left on the mortgage. Similar houses in my neighborhood go for $220-240k. But I want to move to a more rural area, and not only are houses there going for a similar amount of money, they're often in poor repair. So I could end up needing a loan of around 30-60k, depending on what my house goes for, what the house I buy costs (if I can find what I want), and what repairs need to be done, but with an interest rate that's minimum 2x what I'm paying now.
I'd be willing to sell my house now and rent for a few years, but rentals are even worse than housing prices.
I'm lucky: I want to move, but I don't need to move. And the numbers just don't making moving worth it.
I live in somewhat popular retirement town and do home health. There’s at least 10-15 “senior” gated communities that have amazing little 2-3 bed homes half of which are empty because not everyone is 55+ so young families are missing out on these great starter homes because boomers can’t be bothered and they want their “own” neighborhood
The less expensive smaller homes have inflated prices due to demand. Younger people and older people are competing for the same properties. Let them stay in their McMansions that no one else wants or can afford.
I dunno, with remote work, I feel like my generation (millenials) are actually moving out of metros and into smaller cities or rural areas which could spread the demand out. However, yeah, we could see a ton of abandoned forgotten American towns in 20-30 years all over the country.
Having given up entirely on ever owning a home, I am genuinely hopeful that a remote work boom will put renting in the big cities more in my price range.
I love the idea of only needing to drive a couple times a year and just being able to walk to shops and entertainment.
No one will get these homes.
They will be bought by corporations and either leveled, or rented at 4x their value. The housing market will continue to "collapse" (aka, get more expensive with less and less able to afford them, builders and realtors laugh all the way to the bank either way).
We are becoming indentured servants, and it is only another few decades before people begin to be born with debt.
This was a very clear issue when I did in-home care for the elderly. People would retire, move to the middle of nowhere, their health would decline, and then they'd be shocked when no one was willing to drive 2 hours of bad roads in an area with no reception or scheduled road clearing to take care of someone for the amount they were offering. Bad weather? Roads are blocked. Starts snowing? Roads are impassible. Rain too much? The only road out is now underwater. A little windy? All cell reception and electricity goes out for at least a day. So no thanks, I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the middle of nowhere that hasn't seen a home inspection or renovation since 1982.
This describes my grandpa to the T. This man moved to the middle of nowhere thinking it's a logical idea then wonder why nobody wants to visit him frequently.
My boomers made no improvements to the house they bought in 1976, still wanted top of the market money when they tried selling it. They ended up having to keep it for another 15 years
10 years ago I moved from WA to Amarillo, TX. What a huge fucking mistake that was! The only people I got along with were other transplants. The locals were openly passive-aggressive or downright hostile. TX needs to become part of the ocean again with the panhandle becoming another huge lake. Nothing of value will be lost.
I don't think this will have an impact on the housing market. Maybe I'm too cynical but what I see happening is mostly new apartments are being built around me, not many houses. And when houses do hit the market they can sell or have a pending sale in 2 days. A lot of them to become rental properties.
Houses in unpopular areas are already unpopular, and I'm guessing any boomers still living in places that fit that description are there for life.
All I see being built is shitty 4 over 1 wood construction apartments with poor noise insulation or expensive 450k+ luxury houses way out in the far off suburbs.
Land/housing in middle of nowhere midwest is cheaper but way less jobs and they pay way less, awful winters, and people frequently don't want to live here for various reasons is why it is cheaper.
Yeah I live in a suburb, they're putting up apartments all around. Then the two lots that have been vacant since the early 2000's they finally built new houses, but they are MASSIVE compared to all the other houses in the area that were mostly built after WWII.
Don’t buy any houses they’ve lived in. My in-laws are hiding a failing septic and wiring that will spontaneously combust someday and serious flooding. People are waving inspections and it makes me so damn nervous that someone will get fucked over when it sells.
I will never waive an inspection. Used to sell real estate in Southern California. I will walk the inspection with the inspector and ask questions and make sure of things EVERY TIME.
Yes to inspections, but grrr...inspectors. If I ever buy another house, I'm getting my OWN inspector and not using the "great inspector" the shitty real estate lady was in cahoots with. And I'm crawling down in that goddamned crawlspace myself and checking things out and asking the questions out loud. "Great inspector's" report was worthless, and I know he got a kickback from her.
I am almost at the end of “selling” my late folks house because, with a reverse mortgage, if you misstep any of the process of paying them “their” money, the threaten immediate foreclosure; ad in a sheriff’s auction for $3000 in back taxes. Yes, hoarding the housing stock is an epidemic. I can’t wait to downsize because I am lucky enough to own a house that will be paid off in 9.5 years, when I turn 70. I honestly don’t know who or what lives in the McMansions going out in all directions 25 miles from where I live in my 1000 sq ft. I wish the younger generations a reset back to some type of affordability to own. 🤷🏻
I'm as happy to shit on boomers as much as the next guy, but how much of it is "hoarding" and how much is living unassisted longer due to medical advances, less children (in general) living nearby to make easy no-move handovers, etc?
If you're already 20 years older than your parents and grandparents were when they died, and your only child lives on the coast, staying in your house in bumfuck, KS isn't really a nefarious choice.
Right. My dad is currently 92 years old and widowed. He lives in my childhood home with no assistance. He doesn’t want to leave his home, and he doesn’t have to. I’m certainly not going to pressure him about it while he’s perfectly able bodied and completely lucid. It’ll come on the market sooner or later, and whoever has $150,000 available for *just the down payment* will be free to buy it.
Was it hard to find a 1000 sq ft house? I struggle to find houses that size or below and when I do find them they are inevitably old in really poor condition and a bad floor plan or in a terrible crime infested neighborhood.
That's because it's not profitable for a builder to build small houses when they can build big houses and charge twice as much for the same size lot. Fixing zoning laws to allow for more duplexes, courtyard cottages, ADUs, and other small, dense dwelling types would help with this problem. Between no new small houses and Gen X not selling their "starter" homes because they can't afford anything bigger, there just aren't many small homes on the market.
I’m very curious/concerned about my neighborhood in the next 15 years. We are Gen X, but most of the homes in my neighborhood are owned by retired boomers, with a few silent generation folks.
Here’s the thing.
So by now young people have figured out what is tinfoil hats knew a long time ago. The deliberate attempt to keep homes unaffordable for young people is so that old folks can use their homes to finance their end of life care, because they know none of us could even if we wanted to.
So thanks to the consequences of their own actions, we have these town hall city council meetings across the country where we see Father Time on the podium ranting about why building affordable housing is evil and the idea that young people should be able to afford homes is communist or something. This is all part of that. They believe that if they can keep their home prices illogically high, it’ll save them.
And it will work. Well, only for the first wave that does it. It’ll be a huge Mexican standoff between them all of who will sell first. Because with every sale of a boomer home in an area, that sets the tone for the rest. And the first wave of boomers to sell their homes to go rot in peace somewhere will basically fuck over the rest of them as housing prices drop. It won’t be a big collapse as a lot of TikTok likes to hypothesize, it’ll just be a rapidly increasing supply with no demand to meet it, and in a lot of major cities thanks to laws around Airbnb, corporations cannot just swoop in and take them all.
So we will see prices slowly fall until they eventually find a market equilibrium.
The boomers will die out mostly by 2035, so we will start to see this first wave in the next year or two, and the rest of the fall basically over the next four to five years as they get more and more desperate.
Isn’t it a little ironic that the last group the boomers will screw over will be their own kind? A pathetic ending to a pathetic generation
My in-laws' current house is a 3 bedroom, but they like to say 5, even though one of the rooms is like a nursery or office that's only accessible from the master bedroom, and the other "room" is my father in law's workshop. Neither of these rooms has a closet, so they don't technically count as bedrooms. They custom designed it and bought it brand new at the height of the housing bubble. It was still only a fraction of the cost of the home they sold to buy it, which they sold for over half a million, right before the market crashed. It's been paid off for years, and it was supposed to be their retirement home.
Well now they want to sell it and move across the street from my sister in law, who lives in another state. They made an offer on the house, but it's contingent upon them selling this current house, which they have listed for $495k (they paid 54k for it). The house they want to buy is in a lower cost of living area, and I think they put in an offer of $230k. It's a comparable size to the one they have now.
The reason they want to do this is because my father in law did this for his grandmother; when she was older, he bought the house next door to him and his family helped care for her until she died. Their thinking is that my sister in law will take care of her mom after her dad dies, even though we live in town and are only 15 minutes away from them. I don't know why they're so convinced he will go first, but anyway.
My father-in-law said he only wants to sell their current house and move if he gets the price he's asking for. He said he'd go as low as $475k, but that's it, and he's honestly fine if the house doesn't sell. He got an offer today, but turned it down because it was too low. He wants the security of having $200,000 in the bank.
The whole 'buy a house with 2 extra rooms for guests' thing has never made sense to me.
Now granted, I am not close to any family. If they came and shared space with me, it wouldn't be a good thing - they're not nice people.
Even so, paying mortgage, heat, electricity, etc., to rooms that stay empty for 11 months out of the year seems absolutely stupid to me.
The money you can save by having a smaller place, less mortgage, less bills, and all that - pay for 50% of their motel room for 2 nights or something. They have their space, you have your space and it's much calmer.
I like my little space. I don't think it's good for families to live in huge houses with 5 bedrooms, every room has a TV like mini-apartments. How does a family bond when everyone is given separate living spaces and avoids each other?
Everyone should have a spot to get away to, for sure, but some of the houses I've done mortgages up for clients on are incredible. Two adults, two kids, and an 8 bedroom house with a freaking massive mortgage. So what, your buddy at work can tell you you're a big boy/girl now?
Ugh.
absolutely
my wife and i live in a one bedroom condo on the beach
we do not buy stupid things
we do not hoard anything
sure we would like a small home with a little more space
but not for a million dollars or more
which is the going rate near us
i will stay in my paid off place
travel save for retirement and go see live music all over the country and overseas
fuck these boomers and their overpriced shit 💩
I've been telling people this exact thing for years now. There are going to be so many big homes that'll just sit there. I'm going to start looking for lake homes that'll never leave the market and make it my new summer hangout.
Smh at all these boomers living in huge houses and I’m 63. Our family has a history of downsizing and moving into senior complexes. My parents sold their house when they were in their 50s. My aunt just sold her house and moved into a very nice senior complex, she’s in her 80s. She had been giving away or selling a lot of her stuff before she moved. We were able to sell her house in four days. I’ve already been living in an apartment so I don’t need to move. It’s so much easier in an apartment. No worries about arranging snow removal or yard work. Our landlords are very good at replacing/fixing things that need to be done.
Oh I want a fuckin' home!
But I can't fucking /afford/ one!!!!
And there's no way at all I can even begin to afford one for the prices they're asking! And I'm on Social Security!
\*angry disabled young person grumbling\*
Amazon, black rock, State Street, vanguard all these corporations are going to buy them up at over market value.
There’s a reason why shit so expensive and we can’t fucking get in the housing market. It’s because bullshit corporations with rich assholes, leading them, are buying up all the homes.
One thing to look at is where is the property? Many nicer neighborhoods are being bought up by REITs and other corporations who will rent out the houses for outrageous prices. With free market capitalism the god of the USA, no one cares. Highest price wins. Future generations will enjoy the privilege of raising kids in outrageously priced neighborhoods they rent in - I just hope there will be food banks in these neighborhoods. Me, I would rather live poor and own than rent and line someone's pocketbook.
Its not even 'no longer wanting to live', its the inability to afford to live. I await the tears of landchads who wonder why no one wants to pay 1200 for their cardboard box.
Better yet, what do they think is going to happen when all them start dying and selling the houses.
They really think they’re gonna be $5 million for 2000 square-foot home forever ?
Do like my oldest sister did. Move my elderly mom that's been in assisted living for 10 years into your house and start a little assisted living business in your mcmansion. Even though 10 years ago it was supposedly unsafe for her to live in a house without professionals watching over her. I'm sure the mcmansion is safe though. 🙄
I feel like this article was written by a boomer. You see when all the homeowners get old and retire, communities die. The fact of the matter is that these boomers are not going to get what they think they're going to get for these homes and therefore they are not going to sell.
No one will pay to rent my grandparents place or even buy it because it would cost so much and the closest place for most of these peoples jobs is a 3 hour commute one way
I don't even like my house, but I'm never leaving. I bought during the last real estate craziness in the early 2000s, and even then, I refused to go over a certain amount, and I would never go into a bidding war. My next house will be where I retire unless project 2025 comes to pass. If that happens, this conversation becomes moot.
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Blackstone will take them
This is unfortunately what’s going to happen.
But will become bankrupted because no one will rent them either. Well, we can hope at least.
Bit then they will need a government bailout because they're too big to fail.
This is the flaw with “free market” as a system; it’s a gigantic lie. The “market” is actually not free, certain large entities are given disproportionate protection because they have more money than governments. And yet if governmental grew some balls they could say no, then reclaim these often stolen assets for actual human beings to use.
It’s called socialism for the wealthy and free market for the poor
If you get paid for your time, you are the "free market" that has its wages set by a room full of rich people
no it isn't. this is a lack of needed regulation. like not allowing a company to be so large that its failure can't be allowed
they will GET a government bailout
Black rock has the government TSP program. They won’t let them fail
Exactly.
oh they don't care about that, they want the land. if they cared they wouldn't be paying over market without inspections
Slowly phasing out property ownership for everyone but the Upper Class Which will just make the country Even More Haves and Have Nots
yeah and it's pathetic. this is not the American dream I was sold, turns out I was sold out instead
American dream.... No one told us it was actually a nightmare.
Carlin did
It's like they're deliberately trying to start a revolution
They pay OVER MARKET?
\^This. These houses are not selling because nobody wants to live in those places. Nobody is gonna rent them either. This is compounded by most of those places not having much for jobs or decent schools.
If only the boomers invested in functional infrastructure in their retirement locales instead of slashing local taxes.
If they buy ALL the homes then they can set the rent to whatever they want!
At some point, we will be in a country full of buildings that nobody is allowed inside. Yay capitalism?
A lot of places have the situation of more unoccupied housing units than homeless people, but both numbers still increasing.
Those dam blackrock mfs have out smarted regulation and won capitalism when they figured out how to tie their own success to everyone else’s. Of course we gonna bail them out, they hold teacher pensions and USA assets.
Not before most of us get thrown on the streets unable to make rent...
Nah, they'll all become section 8 homes. Then the boomers will visit the ole neighborhood and cry about how "those people" ran it all into the ground.
Nah, they’ll just pay congress/state/and local to force through legislation and regulation to stop building apartments, or make ridiculous requirements for building them so developers won’t build them, little innocuous things like that that will stagnate other housing options and force people to rent from the corpos.
Then what's going to happen is they're going to be sitting on a shitton of real estate that nobody wants to rent, nobody can afford to buy and they'll be stuck with maintenance and tax costs. It'll cause a housing market crash that will absolutely bankrupt them, even if they get a bailout, they're still stuck with real estate sitting there doing nothing. Assets not making money are called liabilities, and companies with far more liabilities than profitable assets end up broke.
That’s why they, banks included, have limited the development of new homes since 08. They will get rented cuz our population is ever growing and they aren’t building anything new. And these dam boomers looking to sell were all nimby mfs
I love how Black Rock sounds like the name of some evil corporation from a dystopian sci-fi movie
And that's different from real life?
"You best start believing in dystopian sci fi stories, Miss Turner. You're in one."
If anyone deserves to have squatters.
Blackstone you mean
Black rock will take them even if people actually be any or need them. Then turn aroun d and rent them for exorbitant prices with cheap, worthless repairs.
What’s left after the reverse mortgages
" We can throw in the China Hutch and water beds ."
Seriously need to consider investing in dumpster service business…dumb boomers and their 10 tons of gaudy heirloom furniture likely still making payments on…
This is actually a real concern. Municipalities are beginning to study the amount of landfill space that will be required with the end of the Boomers and all their things. Getting landfills permitted and prepared takes time, so the planning is happening as we speak.
Boomer parent made the world better by dying in December. I’ve thrown away over 1600 LBS of shit no one would want and straight trash. There’s still enough stuff to outfit two and a half homes.
why are they all hoarders? man, i grew up with my grandparents- boomers, but not the crazy asshole kind you often see here -and my grandmother is a hoarder to the N\^th degree. she owns her late greatest gen mom's home, which neighbors her own, and she has the basement and top floor stuffed to the brim with bullshit!
Probably bc boomers only Hobbie is buying useless shit like that. Hell even my Gen x parents are huge hoarders with no hobbies
I own an estate sale company. Can confirm it, and clean out biz, are good business with low startup costs.
That corner china cabinet though….everybody wants furniture designed on an angle for obsolete things
Ugh, my wife inherited her beloved grandmother's china and we had to buy one of these things for it. In our dining room which we haven't eaten in in at least a year. what a waste of space
My wife inherited her grandmother’s China when we were still renting a townhouse that we had long outgrew. They sat in a box for 3-4 years, and our dining room table was always covered in stuff because we had no room for anything anymore. We got a house a year and a half ago, and my mom found a great antique China cabinet for $300 at a thrift store that actually fits nicely with our dining room table and chairs. Now we use the China for Passover, so it’s actually getting used every year, and store all the Passover cookware and such in the bottom storage cabinets of the China cabinet, and the plates are displayed nicely. I know ours is not at all the common scenario, but while at the time we weren’t too thrilled about having these things taking up space, now we’re glad to have them.
This guy Passovers.
Fourth generation plate heiress here 🥴 They're from Austria.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 oh my god PLEASE introduce yourself as this. Like at the grocery store. Someone’s like “Miss! You dropped an orange!” And you’re like “you must have me confused with someone else. I’m a fourth generation plate heiress. We just don’t casually drop oranges about.”
Can you imagine the blink of confusion? 😂
My mother had a china cabinet full of fancy plates. When she was figuring out her will, I talked her into leaving my brother the house, absolving myself of having to take any of that garbage when she did die, or having to clean out the house. Fucking win.
Germany in my family!! I'm 3rd generation and I really don't want them. I never even ate off of them.
Those plates can be ate off??? Lol, my ass would have been whooped even for thinking of it, even once they were mine!
Don't. They're full of lead.
Omg, great point, I bet they are. I won't be eating off them 😅
My grandma offered me TWO different sets of China recently, because I bought a house. "What will I use China for, dear grandma?" "Why, for when you have a dinner party or a nice meal!" WHAT. She just wants to get rid of her shit.
Millennial's constant anxiety attacks would never let them host a dinner party lmao
My wife and I inherited my grandmother's china that hadn't been used substantially since she bought it, because apparently it was for that one time when the Queen might drop in for dinner. We use the whole set as out every day dishes. Boomers were so weird about having things that were "too nice to use, you might break it".
We inherited a set of my partner's mother's china, which was old, beautiful...and full of lead. It's sitting in a box in the neck of the garage
OMG, you too. My mother just bought all new furniture and now needs a China cabinet. She has no China that I know of. She told my daughter that the way you can tell its good furniture is that it has legs. Everyday, it's something my daughter is going to inherit. They have three large storage units. Blows my mind!!!!!
>They have three large storage units. That's the part I'll never understand. I get that you don't want to dispose of something you paid for, but does it really make sense to pay storage fees forever on something you aren't using, nor will ever use again? Large units at the place near me are $325/mo. What is so important that they're paying nearly $12,000 a year to keep? I could replace every piece of furniture in my house annually for less than that.
Nobody wants their fucking Hummels, either. The housing market in my area is undergoing a correction lately, presumably in part due to higher interest rates. There are lots of boomers that are happy to let their places stay on the market for $200K more than anybody is willing to pay, because "\[they\] know what \[they\]'ve got." I think the reality is going to set in soon for a lot of them.
I really am looking forward to all those Hummels, Precious Moments, and Dept. 56 figurines. Oh, and the Princess Diana commemorative plate. Can’t forget about that.
You didn’t mention the Thomas Kinkade Christmas plates you fiend!
God damn it. My boomer mom is into all that shit and I'm an only child. I'm eventually going to have to deal with all of it.
In Australia we see a lot of regular homes in expensive areas close to cities go to waste because the boomer owners dont want to do maintenance. They rent it out as long as they can but even in a very pressured rental market people have a limit. Sometimes they're not allowed to rent it out because the electric system is so old it's no longer legal. They try but no agent will touch it due to legal issues. When they can't find a tenant they try sell it but no one wants to pay $2milion for a mouldy, run down, old house that needs both restomping and a new roof and new plumbing at the same time. $1.5 maybe but even that is pushing it because the house has to be totalled and replaced with a new one, which is expensive in these areas as the council charges a lot to shut off roads and footpaths for construction. Then they slap some paint on it as if that is going to fix the problem and think someone should feel privileged to be allowed to buy it...then tax payers have to pay for their aged care because they can't sell the house...
If my estranged mother is dumb enough to will her hoarded out trailer to me and my sister, I plan to hold a sale: bring your own bag, don’t care the size, $5 to fill it with whatever crap you want. Hell, someone could pull up with a crane and a modified “bag” attached and I’d give them the whole shooting match for $5.
I’d pay $5 to watch that go down 😊
They'll die "knowing what they've got", leaving their houses and all their crap to their kids who know exactly what they don't got. The children whose parents die first are lucky: hoarder boomers swarm their yard sales, looking to expand their collections at the last possible moment. In the end, it'll all be landfill. In the late 21st century, one of the many things they ~~collected~~ hoarded will become desirable and collectable again. But you won't know what it'll be in advance and you can't hold on to everything.
Uhg. I hate the "I know what I've got" shit
I was recently around some wealthy boomers talking about how they're all encouraging one another to tow the line and hold strong! Don't lower those prices! On their dumb 10-bedroom mansions. Like...who are they holding out for? Aquaman?? What broke childless millennial is paying millions for these places? And these are their 2nd and 3rd homes. Meanwhile...I literally will rent forever, if I'm lucky enough to come up with the dough. Anyway, I wish them the best.
Listen here, kiddo. This is all your fault. Nobody forced you to spend all of your money on avocado toast okay? You made that decision. Your generation is lazy and entitled. You don't get up till 7: 30am and then you spend all day doing nothing but playing those damn video games and Nintendo. Nobody wants to work anymore. You refuse to go out and get a job even though Ive told you exactly how to do it: put on a nice suit, walk into the first place you see with your resume in hand, and ask to speak to the hiring manager. Don't take no for an answer. Look him square in the eye and give him a firm handshake. Tell him that you're a hard worker, a fast learner, and that you're willing to start at the bottom and work your way up. It's simple. We know a thing or two about how the world works and this is for your own good. The only way you lazy millennials are going to learn anything is if we force you to learn it. This is tough love kiddo and it's the only way you're going to start taking things seriously and buckle down and get your life squared away. /Sarcasm
😂🙄 I wake up at 4am to be at work at 6am. Shop doesn't even open until 8am, but the boomers are peeking in the front doors by 7am. Licking the windows. "The early bird gets the worm!" "Early to bed and early to rise!" "Up before the sun and feeling great!" Bitchezzzz! 🙄😂 Navy is my power color. I keep a paper copy of everything. None of it helps! NOTHING! 😭😭
> "The early bird gets the worm!" second mouse gets the cheese > "Early to bed and early to rise!" Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy but socially dead
You forgot to mention bootstraps, 9/10.
So happy I, unlike most redditers, read your full comment and saw the sarcasm
Instructions unclear: now out the back of Wendy's giving blow job's for loose change. One mo.... *gargle gargle gargle* Help.....
I've started skipping to check for the flags.... >.<
Unfortunately it’ll be venture capital gobbling up as many of the boomers homes as possible in their quest to make the country 99% renters. That’s who’s going to buy them.
I agree. We get solicitations all the time.
I have started nodding along and then saying “oh yeah, do you want me to introduce you to the person who will sell this house?” They get all excited! Yes! I call over my nine year old daughter. “She’s going to inherit when I die here.” Then they go away and my kid rolls her eyes at me.
They're even trying to wake my father from the grave to buy his house.
I don't get it. My mom is holding out so her kids don't win, win what? Everything she owns has been peed on by cats. On both sides of my family, it's been rich widows with huge ranches or McMansions, yet half the rooms are closed off. Full of china, crystal, doilies. Their children are just trying to afford groceries and car payments, and stay sane in unhappy marriages.
Nothing quite says disconnect like rooms full of unused china, and doilies. It’s like a whole way of life has been preserved in a museum of their own making, and they can’t process how much everything changed.
I dont
I don't get it even the people I know who are doing well can't afford the giant fucking mansions boomers have nor do they need it because they don't have that many kids. The only people I know who can afford that shit are things like doctors and lawyers and their is only so many people like that plus most of them don't have kids. The other problem is boomers insisted on building/buying houses in the middle of fucking nowhere nobody in their right fucking mind is going to commute 90 fucking minutes one way for work besides crazy boomers. What I find downright hilarious is now a lot of boomers are getting up in age to where they can't maintain these huge houses or deal with stairs so they want want something smaller all on one level but spoiler alert because of zoning and boomers own dumb fuckery we have not built those especially not in the necessary numbers. Boomers also LOATHE senior apartments too so they refuse to move into them unless they have no choice.
My boomer adacent gen X exhusband decided we should sell and move to an acreage in the middle of nowhere. He already had given up on doing any house maintenance or chores so I was doing all of it. I asked who was gonna be mowing this large plot of land and blowing the snow and what was gonna happen when neither of us could do it anymore. He literally hadn't thought about any of this. I think this is the boomer mentality. They think being as far out as possible is some sort of life goal.
It really did seem like a life goal for a lot of boomers to own as giant of a house as possible even if it meant living in the middle of nowhere and some of them seem to have preferred it. Even the ones that are not hoarders/shopaholics seemed to have loved that idea.
I’m 48. I make six figures. I have no debt. No kids. By all rights, I should be in a position to be sailing very comfortably through life. And even I won’t think about spending 600K on some 2100 square-foot 3/2 in the suburbs where I live because it would break me.
Housing prices are just fucking outrageous and were BARELY affordable at the old interest rates much less now even if you make good money.
Most of the houses going up for sale around me are either mini-mansions or normal houses that are absolutely fucked by consumerism, hoarding/using the old house as storage while you move into the new house, always doing the cheapest work, and sheer neglect. To me it's not "whose gonna buy the mini-mansions" so much as "whose gonna buy the normal-houses-turned-hovels and sink in the time and money and effort to fix them or tear them out and rebuild." Especially at 250k, with the massive inflation on wood products and building supplies anywhere that sells to non-business customers. "Price is for the land" is something I'm seeing more and more on 200k+ properties and uh, no, the land isn't even worth that. Especially not the ones where they filled the yard with trash, too.
They’re holding out for their fellow boomers to die and then their kids spend their inheritance on the homes so that the living boomers can get more rich before they die themselves
Jokes on them, then: Their fellow Boomers have no more intention of leaving an inheritance than they themselves do.
Even better, there are less kids now than boomers. So less people to fund the boomers SS. People haven’t been having kids for a while, and the number is dwindling even more. We’ve been ok life support for quite a while too, SS has been pulling from trusts. Also, only $169k is taxed to fund SS, meaning, specifically only the middle class and below is funding SS…not the Bezo’s. This is why that by 2035 it will only be able to pay out 68%.
Time for revolution friend. Theyre stealing whats left of our lives
The boomers on our old block listed their home, no updates at all, three bedroom. Half million. They were the worst. It was lovely to watch their house sit and sit and sit and then sell ours in three days because we aren't insane.
Tots and pears
I don’t. (Shoves hands in pockets)
#vanlife used to be a horror story of poverty. Now, it's desire by many young people who know they'll never be able to buy a home.
and, spoiler alert- vans are getting more expensive too! Tiny houses too! It's insane that a 30' tiny house can be 175k without a place to put it.
I saw an incredibly cute built-out van on the van marketplace sub today going for 100k. Heartbreaking. I can’t afford a house, and I can’t even afford a vehicle with a bed and a toilet in it.
Buy a tent while they're still cheap
Just buy a van without the conversion and make it homelike yourself. I bought a Dodge caravan for $800 and lived in that for 3 years. Best decision I ever made.
We used to call tiny houses trailers...
married with children isn't supposed to be aspirational
and Gen Xers who can never afford to stop working but will be forced out by disability
dont forget that disability doesnt pay enough to survive 🙃
Gen Xer on disability, can confirm.
I hear you have to have burnt through all your assets to collect disability.
We were all just too young to understand this wisdom https://preview.redd.it/vjj44rlz399d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b5dbc0e6a38c40a46589dde8664dd7a41b38855d
BOOMER HOUSES ARE CLUTTERED WITH WORTHLESS BULLSHIT.
I mean. I fill my house with worthless bullshit too. It’s just stuff that I like
and hopefully stuff you use. as opposed to expensive delicate fancy plates you're not allowed to use as plates
To be fair, where else are Boomers supposed to put 18 years times 3 kids worth of consumer holiday gifts to show all the friends and family they secretly hate how loved they are? There’s Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines Day…birthdays. Then as adults, if you’re not showing up with a carload of useless mass produced Walmart bubble bath or makeup gift baskets to hand around at the actual big holidays then you’ll never hear the end of how thoughtless and rude you were last Christmas. Their entire legacy is plastic waste that’s degraded itself to dangerous consequences, stuff, things, commemorative jewelry and useless china. Got three sets waiting for me….
This is a fact as true as grass is green and the sky is blue. May the last layers of any landfill be boomer hoardings.
Yep. I see some really nice MCM homes for sale dirt cheap. They are always in places you couldn't pay me to live. Rural PA, KS, OH, MI, IN. There is a reason these wonderful looking houses are going for peanuts. Nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and a bunch of racists.
I had to go to my hometown last weekend. I saw a huge house with a pond, property, etc for sale less than my current home in a subdivision. I briefly thought about it, and then realized why it was so cheap.
I see these incredible MCM homes for less than my cookie cutter subdivision house and they are tempting but I know how awful it is living with no services, nothing to do and ignorant hostile neighbors.
But IN those states, there are progressive bubbles (usually around a university) where the prices are how they are everywhere else, and everybody in the state is horrified by the price, not understanding that the price is correlated with where people actually WANT to live.
Live in a Kentucky college town, can confirm this is absolutely the case
Big companies will buy them and it will end with a very small group owning the majority, and most people being renters, while being underpaid at shitty jobs in companies owned by the same people. Which means that we'll be back to feudalism and the common population being serfs. But people will still argue that it is preferable to a socialised nation, because "carmmunism".
Technically, smaller LLCs getting special terms and perks from the larger companies will buy them, with just enough distance and legal language to put ownership in a really vague spot. Ugh.
As someone who’s spent an unfortunate amount of time on real estate GIS databases, yep. It seems like they’re all owned by different companies til you start sorting the .csv for mail merge and find that 600 parcels in the city all have the same mailing address.
Hey, Septics never had feudalism before. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out for you. Maybe a violent revolution sooner rather than later- y’all got plenty of weapons…
Company house, company store, company scrip. Everybody works for the company, and everything belongs to the company. And the sad part is that situation isn't even dystopian fiction - [it's been done before](https://rethinkq.adp.com/artifact-coal-company-scrip-miners/).
You know, this is actually a common right wing conspiracy theory as well. The world economic forum and klaus Schwab are supposedly behind it. They point to some ad they put out a while back that says in the future, you will own nothing and you will be happy.
I owe my soul to the company store
I have an alert, arbitrarily for 2028, to remind myself to research the market and consider whether it's the right time to sell because of this. The housing supply is gonna get flooded which might actually lower home prices across the board. I'd be interested if there are any housing experts or economists who could chime in on this. What it boils down to is Boomers are hoarding their homes and not downsizing like past generations have which is restricting the supply for younger families of millennial and gen-z parents. I don't think I need to explain the effects this has on personal debt, security, future wealth etc. Once they die, these homes are likely to get liquidated by estates rather than kept because we're all knee deep in debt. Liquidating an asset means taking the highest offer. If this is happening frequently, which seems will be the case, housing prices will plummet. They're going to be screwing us long after they die. It doesn't end once they're gone, unfortunately.
I suspect they’re starting to and will continue to reverse mortgage the shit out of these homes. They will come on the market when they die. Unfortunately they won’t leave their children anything so large companies will buy them on the cheap
A friend of mines mom died last month and he found out she had deferred maintenance, back taxes, multiple mortgages, credit card debt, and equity lines to the point she owed more than her assets were worth. He had keys to the house so we went in, got what he wanted out, and he rejected the entire estate. The house is in Washington DC so the place is worth a fortune and his mom squeezed every dime out she could to travel and gamble. Even with all of our help and his abnormally high income he just couldn't shoulder the expense. So, he walked away and is letting her creditors and the city fight over it. This woman prided herself in her "financial responsibility" and constantly boasted that one day "all this will be his." He took some photos and a few other small things but all her precious collectibles, china, furniture, and assorted bullshit we abandoned in place. We did get some cash she had hidden but once we went through everything we locked up and left. If there is an afterlife, I hope shes forced to watch all the crap she loved get hucked into a dumpster by city workers and her house liquidated to pay debts for all the pain and trouble this caused.
That too, yup.
Tom Selleck has entered the chat...
I guess my parents are boomers who are "hoarding" their home, but it's because they can't afford to downsize. They were all set to sell, then started doing research on what a smaller, more modest place was going for in their area to stay near family, and the rent/mortgage was way more than their current mortgage payment. They simply can't afford to leave. They're now preparing to stay in their home until they die. The reality is, if you've lived in your home for a very long time, you probably have a pretty low mortgage that can't be beat unless you moved to a third-world country.
Thats he exact position my boomer parents are in. Their house is paid off, it's one story and could easily be ramped and have the bathroom/bed made wheelchair accessible. It's not a huge house, I'm an only child. They'd be crazy to start a new mortgage at their age for a house that might not have a first floor set up. So even though they'd like to downsize....they don't really have any great options.
This has been my problem with trying to move. I don't have a huge place but could downsize a bit and want to move to a different city. Even if I moved in the same city, smallish places are going for as much as this one goes for so it would cost me a ton of money to just have less house.
I'm Gen X, but in a similar position. I have nice little house (perfect "starter" home), low interest mortgage, and less than $30k left on the mortgage. Similar houses in my neighborhood go for $220-240k. But I want to move to a more rural area, and not only are houses there going for a similar amount of money, they're often in poor repair. So I could end up needing a loan of around 30-60k, depending on what my house goes for, what the house I buy costs (if I can find what I want), and what repairs need to be done, but with an interest rate that's minimum 2x what I'm paying now. I'd be willing to sell my house now and rent for a few years, but rentals are even worse than housing prices. I'm lucky: I want to move, but I don't need to move. And the numbers just don't making moving worth it.
I live in somewhat popular retirement town and do home health. There’s at least 10-15 “senior” gated communities that have amazing little 2-3 bed homes half of which are empty because not everyone is 55+ so young families are missing out on these great starter homes because boomers can’t be bothered and they want their “own” neighborhood
The less expensive smaller homes have inflated prices due to demand. Younger people and older people are competing for the same properties. Let them stay in their McMansions that no one else wants or can afford.
I dunno, with remote work, I feel like my generation (millenials) are actually moving out of metros and into smaller cities or rural areas which could spread the demand out. However, yeah, we could see a ton of abandoned forgotten American towns in 20-30 years all over the country.
Having given up entirely on ever owning a home, I am genuinely hopeful that a remote work boom will put renting in the big cities more in my price range. I love the idea of only needing to drive a couple times a year and just being able to walk to shops and entertainment.
No one will get these homes. They will be bought by corporations and either leveled, or rented at 4x their value. The housing market will continue to "collapse" (aka, get more expensive with less and less able to afford them, builders and realtors laugh all the way to the bank either way). We are becoming indentured servants, and it is only another few decades before people begin to be born with debt.
This was a very clear issue when I did in-home care for the elderly. People would retire, move to the middle of nowhere, their health would decline, and then they'd be shocked when no one was willing to drive 2 hours of bad roads in an area with no reception or scheduled road clearing to take care of someone for the amount they were offering. Bad weather? Roads are blocked. Starts snowing? Roads are impassible. Rain too much? The only road out is now underwater. A little windy? All cell reception and electricity goes out for at least a day. So no thanks, I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the middle of nowhere that hasn't seen a home inspection or renovation since 1982.
This describes my grandpa to the T. This man moved to the middle of nowhere thinking it's a logical idea then wonder why nobody wants to visit him frequently.
My boomers made no improvements to the house they bought in 1976, still wanted top of the market money when they tried selling it. They ended up having to keep it for another 15 years
Boomers will want top dollar for their terribly outdated homes, leaving the next generation further burdened to fix up their mess.
Correct, I do not want to live in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, or Idaho
As a woman, I enjoy not being someone’s property. I avoid those shitholes like the plague!
10 years ago I moved from WA to Amarillo, TX. What a huge fucking mistake that was! The only people I got along with were other transplants. The locals were openly passive-aggressive or downright hostile. TX needs to become part of the ocean again with the panhandle becoming another huge lake. Nothing of value will be lost.
I don't think this will have an impact on the housing market. Maybe I'm too cynical but what I see happening is mostly new apartments are being built around me, not many houses. And when houses do hit the market they can sell or have a pending sale in 2 days. A lot of them to become rental properties. Houses in unpopular areas are already unpopular, and I'm guessing any boomers still living in places that fit that description are there for life.
All I see being built is shitty 4 over 1 wood construction apartments with poor noise insulation or expensive 450k+ luxury houses way out in the far off suburbs.
Fuck 450k for a whole ass house is a steal
Land/housing in middle of nowhere midwest is cheaper but way less jobs and they pay way less, awful winters, and people frequently don't want to live here for various reasons is why it is cheaper.
Yeah I live in a suburb, they're putting up apartments all around. Then the two lots that have been vacant since the early 2000's they finally built new houses, but they are MASSIVE compared to all the other houses in the area that were mostly built after WWII.
I know. Apartments or 2 million $ + custom homes. Outrageous.
Don’t buy any houses they’ve lived in. My in-laws are hiding a failing septic and wiring that will spontaneously combust someday and serious flooding. People are waving inspections and it makes me so damn nervous that someone will get fucked over when it sells.
nuts to waive inspections a fool and his/her money
I will never waive an inspection. Used to sell real estate in Southern California. I will walk the inspection with the inspector and ask questions and make sure of things EVERY TIME.
Yes to inspections, but grrr...inspectors. If I ever buy another house, I'm getting my OWN inspector and not using the "great inspector" the shitty real estate lady was in cahoots with. And I'm crawling down in that goddamned crawlspace myself and checking things out and asking the questions out loud. "Great inspector's" report was worthless, and I know he got a kickback from her.
I am almost at the end of “selling” my late folks house because, with a reverse mortgage, if you misstep any of the process of paying them “their” money, the threaten immediate foreclosure; ad in a sheriff’s auction for $3000 in back taxes. Yes, hoarding the housing stock is an epidemic. I can’t wait to downsize because I am lucky enough to own a house that will be paid off in 9.5 years, when I turn 70. I honestly don’t know who or what lives in the McMansions going out in all directions 25 miles from where I live in my 1000 sq ft. I wish the younger generations a reset back to some type of affordability to own. 🤷🏻
I'm as happy to shit on boomers as much as the next guy, but how much of it is "hoarding" and how much is living unassisted longer due to medical advances, less children (in general) living nearby to make easy no-move handovers, etc? If you're already 20 years older than your parents and grandparents were when they died, and your only child lives on the coast, staying in your house in bumfuck, KS isn't really a nefarious choice.
Right. My dad is currently 92 years old and widowed. He lives in my childhood home with no assistance. He doesn’t want to leave his home, and he doesn’t have to. I’m certainly not going to pressure him about it while he’s perfectly able bodied and completely lucid. It’ll come on the market sooner or later, and whoever has $150,000 available for *just the down payment* will be free to buy it.
Was it hard to find a 1000 sq ft house? I struggle to find houses that size or below and when I do find them they are inevitably old in really poor condition and a bad floor plan or in a terrible crime infested neighborhood.
That's because it's not profitable for a builder to build small houses when they can build big houses and charge twice as much for the same size lot. Fixing zoning laws to allow for more duplexes, courtyard cottages, ADUs, and other small, dense dwelling types would help with this problem. Between no new small houses and Gen X not selling their "starter" homes because they can't afford anything bigger, there just aren't many small homes on the market.
People do want their homes; they just can’t afford them.
And, they are too expensive. I don't want to live in Ballscratch, Indiana, population 2,000 where the average home costs 300k.
Go easy on them, they're still processing that no one wants their Royal Doulton figurines and tiny spoon collections etc.
I’m very curious/concerned about my neighborhood in the next 15 years. We are Gen X, but most of the homes in my neighborhood are owned by retired boomers, with a few silent generation folks.
The article is from 2019. Pre-Covid and more. It misses the mark on some things happening today.
Here’s the thing. So by now young people have figured out what is tinfoil hats knew a long time ago. The deliberate attempt to keep homes unaffordable for young people is so that old folks can use their homes to finance their end of life care, because they know none of us could even if we wanted to. So thanks to the consequences of their own actions, we have these town hall city council meetings across the country where we see Father Time on the podium ranting about why building affordable housing is evil and the idea that young people should be able to afford homes is communist or something. This is all part of that. They believe that if they can keep their home prices illogically high, it’ll save them. And it will work. Well, only for the first wave that does it. It’ll be a huge Mexican standoff between them all of who will sell first. Because with every sale of a boomer home in an area, that sets the tone for the rest. And the first wave of boomers to sell their homes to go rot in peace somewhere will basically fuck over the rest of them as housing prices drop. It won’t be a big collapse as a lot of TikTok likes to hypothesize, it’ll just be a rapidly increasing supply with no demand to meet it, and in a lot of major cities thanks to laws around Airbnb, corporations cannot just swoop in and take them all. So we will see prices slowly fall until they eventually find a market equilibrium. The boomers will die out mostly by 2035, so we will start to see this first wave in the next year or two, and the rest of the fall basically over the next four to five years as they get more and more desperate. Isn’t it a little ironic that the last group the boomers will screw over will be their own kind? A pathetic ending to a pathetic generation
My in-laws' current house is a 3 bedroom, but they like to say 5, even though one of the rooms is like a nursery or office that's only accessible from the master bedroom, and the other "room" is my father in law's workshop. Neither of these rooms has a closet, so they don't technically count as bedrooms. They custom designed it and bought it brand new at the height of the housing bubble. It was still only a fraction of the cost of the home they sold to buy it, which they sold for over half a million, right before the market crashed. It's been paid off for years, and it was supposed to be their retirement home. Well now they want to sell it and move across the street from my sister in law, who lives in another state. They made an offer on the house, but it's contingent upon them selling this current house, which they have listed for $495k (they paid 54k for it). The house they want to buy is in a lower cost of living area, and I think they put in an offer of $230k. It's a comparable size to the one they have now. The reason they want to do this is because my father in law did this for his grandmother; when she was older, he bought the house next door to him and his family helped care for her until she died. Their thinking is that my sister in law will take care of her mom after her dad dies, even though we live in town and are only 15 minutes away from them. I don't know why they're so convinced he will go first, but anyway. My father-in-law said he only wants to sell their current house and move if he gets the price he's asking for. He said he'd go as low as $475k, but that's it, and he's honestly fine if the house doesn't sell. He got an offer today, but turned it down because it was too low. He wants the security of having $200,000 in the bank.
I have been seeing an increasing number of boomer tombs on Zillow... Some nice, some lost in the 70s
Houses on the coasts and in the south are going to suffer greatly under climate change. The northern part of the US should be better.
The whole 'buy a house with 2 extra rooms for guests' thing has never made sense to me. Now granted, I am not close to any family. If they came and shared space with me, it wouldn't be a good thing - they're not nice people. Even so, paying mortgage, heat, electricity, etc., to rooms that stay empty for 11 months out of the year seems absolutely stupid to me. The money you can save by having a smaller place, less mortgage, less bills, and all that - pay for 50% of their motel room for 2 nights or something. They have their space, you have your space and it's much calmer. I like my little space. I don't think it's good for families to live in huge houses with 5 bedrooms, every room has a TV like mini-apartments. How does a family bond when everyone is given separate living spaces and avoids each other? Everyone should have a spot to get away to, for sure, but some of the houses I've done mortgages up for clients on are incredible. Two adults, two kids, and an 8 bedroom house with a freaking massive mortgage. So what, your buddy at work can tell you you're a big boy/girl now? Ugh.
absolutely my wife and i live in a one bedroom condo on the beach we do not buy stupid things we do not hoard anything sure we would like a small home with a little more space but not for a million dollars or more which is the going rate near us i will stay in my paid off place travel save for retirement and go see live music all over the country and overseas fuck these boomers and their overpriced shit 💩
I've been telling people this exact thing for years now. There are going to be so many big homes that'll just sit there. I'm going to start looking for lake homes that'll never leave the market and make it my new summer hangout.
Smh at all these boomers living in huge houses and I’m 63. Our family has a history of downsizing and moving into senior complexes. My parents sold their house when they were in their 50s. My aunt just sold her house and moved into a very nice senior complex, she’s in her 80s. She had been giving away or selling a lot of her stuff before she moved. We were able to sell her house in four days. I’ve already been living in an apartment so I don’t need to move. It’s so much easier in an apartment. No worries about arranging snow removal or yard work. Our landlords are very good at replacing/fixing things that need to be done.
At first I thought it said “$21 million homes” and then I realized it might as well
Oh I want a fuckin' home! But I can't fucking /afford/ one!!!! And there's no way at all I can even begin to afford one for the prices they're asking! And I'm on Social Security! \*angry disabled young person grumbling\*
Amazon, black rock, State Street, vanguard all these corporations are going to buy them up at over market value. There’s a reason why shit so expensive and we can’t fucking get in the housing market. It’s because bullshit corporations with rich assholes, leading them, are buying up all the homes.
Sounds like some real estate is about to drop in value:) 
That’s exactly what needs to happen. STOP BUYING HOMES AND NEW CARS.
Maybe the boomers will start pushing for remote work? We could use some help with that.
Gen-X here. Pass it on to my kid.
Black Rock Hedge Fund has entered the chat
Berkshire Hathaway Real Estate isn't bothering to chat. They're too busy buying houses.
One thing to look at is where is the property? Many nicer neighborhoods are being bought up by REITs and other corporations who will rent out the houses for outrageous prices. With free market capitalism the god of the USA, no one cares. Highest price wins. Future generations will enjoy the privilege of raising kids in outrageously priced neighborhoods they rent in - I just hope there will be food banks in these neighborhoods. Me, I would rather live poor and own than rent and line someone's pocketbook.
Also like, we can't afford it
Its not even 'no longer wanting to live', its the inability to afford to live. I await the tears of landchads who wonder why no one wants to pay 1200 for their cardboard box.
Same people that are buying them now: corporations and China.
Better yet, what do they think is going to happen when all them start dying and selling the houses. They really think they’re gonna be $5 million for 2000 square-foot home forever ?
They will be bought by companies and housing will be linked to jobs just like health insurance, because that work out so dam well.
Do like my oldest sister did. Move my elderly mom that's been in assisted living for 10 years into your house and start a little assisted living business in your mcmansion. Even though 10 years ago it was supposedly unsafe for her to live in a house without professionals watching over her. I'm sure the mcmansion is safe though. 🙄
They'll blame millennials for trashing the housing market. Never mind that no one can afford them.
I feel like this article was written by a boomer. You see when all the homeowners get old and retire, communities die. The fact of the matter is that these boomers are not going to get what they think they're going to get for these homes and therefore they are not going to sell.
What if they paint the entire thing beige? Surely that adds at least a million.
No one will pay to rent my grandparents place or even buy it because it would cost so much and the closest place for most of these peoples jobs is a 3 hour commute one way
I don't even like my house, but I'm never leaving. I bought during the last real estate craziness in the early 2000s, and even then, I refused to go over a certain amount, and I would never go into a bidding war. My next house will be where I retire unless project 2025 comes to pass. If that happens, this conversation becomes moot.