Buying a family-sized home with three or more bedrooms used to be manageable for young people with children. But with home prices climbing faster than wages, mortgage rates still close to 23-year highs and a shortage of homes nationwide, many Millennials with kids can’t afford it. And Gen Z adults with kids? Even harder.
Meanwhile, Baby Boomers are staying in their larger homes for longer, preferring to age in place and stay active in a neighborhood that’s familiar to them. And even if they sold, where would they go? There is a shortage of smaller homes in those neighborhoods.
As a result, empty-nest Baby Boomers own 28% of large homes — and Milliennials with kids own just 14%, according to a Redfin analysis released Tuesday. Gen Z families own just 0.3% of homes with three bedrooms or more.
Sadly, many can’t move. Retirement homes/communities are sometimes more expensive. Smaller homes cost more or have HOA fees they can’t make work. Most all options have taxes they also can’t make work.
I wish it were as easy as telling them to move but it’s not.
A few years ago my grandparents were in a memory care facility as their health declined. It cost them $18,000 a month to stay there. Adjusting for inflation that’s like $22,000 a month.
I’m assuming a large part of that was the full time nursing care to keep Gran’s from wandering off into the street looking for Pinkie, their childhood cat in the middle of rush hour (as well as dealing with… you know… making sure they get meds and, eating right, and wiping their ass after, they, uh, ate right.)
Not really, surprisingly. They mostly only needed basic assisted living stuff (meals were provided). Both needed help with their medications, but my grandpa was mostly independent, only requiring help putting on his shoes and taking showers. My grandma was a psycho wannabe escape artist though. But she didn’t really need someone to watch her all the time. The building was intentionally designed confusingly to prevent escapes.
It’s pretty insane that America has virtually no supply of inexpensive small homes. It’s all about the 2500+ sq-ft behemoths that cost $400,000+.
Even though it’s a “worse” deal per sqft I think the market for sub $200,000 homes in the 500-750 sq-ft range would be absolutely booming if it existed.
I know a real estate developer type. (kinda a moron, actually, but he’s got a lot of experience in building expensive places to live.)
A comment he made to me once was “Nobody builds low-income housing. a mid-rise luxury condo will only cost a bit more to build than low income apartments, but you make a shitload more”
yeah, he was also kind of an asshole.
Yeah, I completely believe it.
Space-efficient middle housing for the poor and lower middle-class is not something we can rely on private companies to do in America. It’s something that is going to have to take government intervention.
The apartment complex I was in took up as much land as around 5-7 average sized new construction homes yet it housed
4246(I actually remember two of the buildings having 8 apartments each) apartments. It was also in a part of the country where a car was basically required. There was space for every apartment to have at least 1 car and have space to spare. Realistically probably about 1.5 cars per apartment could fit parked in the complex.Parking minimums are utter madness, and a big part of the issue in the US. Although I understand that in some states/cities where this isn’t required, developers still overbuild the parking just out of the assumption that buyers/renters will prefer it.
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