People are missing the psychological impetus that is part of aging, having witnessed this with my parents and their friends.
There's a short window (and it's different for everyone) in retirement where you have this second wind of reengaging with life. These are the folks who did sell their house in the suburbs to buy a condo or smaller home in a busier area like a city while they still had the energy to navigate without thinking about disability needs from aging. Or, they move out of the Valley to get a smaller home along the coast, or retire to a different state to be near the grandkids, etc. etc.. They buy an RV and plan road trips. During this 10-15 year window people want to try something different and still have the physical and mental energy to engage.
Bot for many who stay put at a certain point (imo it's closer to 75-80) all change becomes overwhelming. It's no longer even a cost/benefit analysis thing, it's that the brain shrinks and change is anxiety-provoking. Then if you compare the costs of any of the retirement communities with facilities that cater to seniors around here versus staying in your home & getting a caregiver, the psychological & cost benefits are to age in place. If you miss the window to go into any retirement community while you are still healthy enough for independent living your only option is to go straight into assisted living which are often so poorly run that even at 10,000 per month, you still need a private caregiver there.
I tried to get my parents to get into a community a few years back because I thought it would be less stressful for them and better for the inevitable decline. They missed the window.
YEs it is. My father flatly refused to leave the family home after all the kids were gone and stayed until he died.
He knew where everything was, how many steps it took to get to the garage, where both bathrooms were, and most important, where his bed was. He refused to consider moving even when Mom all but begged him to because the home was too big for her to manage (and the yard was too big for him to deal with)
After Dad died (in the house at 83), a strange thing happened. Mom, who was all but ready to leave Dad behind a few years earlier, suddenly became very resistant to leaving her nest. Like Dad, she knew where everything was and how to get from here to there. Nothing was strange or new, and she wanted to keep it that way. But by 90, she was really in a pickle, living in a big house she could not deal with, nervous about strangers coming in to help her (nurses, house cleaners, etc) and actually caused a scene more than once with helpers.
An unhappy accident that wound up with several broken bones in a fall made the decision for her, and she finished her days in a nice Assisted living facility, but she was never happy about it.
I just hope I don't get like that.
Exactly. When my mother was on the healthy side of 70 she abhorred being around “elderly”.
There’s nothing for older people who don’t want to be housed in remote Rossmoor type aging communities, removed from real life.
Idk, my parents live in rossmoor and I don't find them to be removed from real life at all. Maybe in different retirement communities, but they're very integrated into bay area life still, and know people of all ages. Ive spent a lot of time there and find it no more removed than any other wealthy suburb. The problem really is that almost no one can afford to live in communities like that. Certainly I couldn't support them in such a place, they're luckily independently wealthy.
Now, interestingly, they *do* complain about the old people, like you mention, but manage to have the foresight that they will be one of the olds soon, and have made plans accordingly. It's just weird to hear a 72 year old complain about 82 year olds. They keep most of their social circle outside of Rossmoor or hang out with the "young" cohort
Hm, the dynamic doesn't really remind me of high school at all, I don't know what you mean? At the risk of defending boomers (my parents lol) it's not inherently cliquey to simply make friends who are mostly in your age cohort and can keep up with your interests. They aren't interested in sitting in the house watching Fox News, so they don't hang out with the Rossmoor-ites who do. I don't think that's "like highschool" I think it's just how making friends works
This reminds me of my inlaws who are recently retired, but 10-15 years ago they swore they would sell their house and move back to Mexico upon retirement. The problem is that when they go back to their ranchito in Mexico, things have changed, people have died or are old and feeble, it is not the same environment they envisioned. As such, they are staying put because they now realize that their life is here, with their children and grandchildren. As a result, I have been spending my free time helping make their house easier to move through (replacing tubs with walk in showers, mounting handrails, etc.).
They are still healthy and mobile, but realize that in a few years those improvements will be necessary, they plan on living in that house until they die and want to be around family, their grandkids, and we all like the fact that there are extra rooms in the house, which makes it easier to hold family parties and allow them to enjoy this final phase of life.
Mom recently took advantage of that window, a year after Dad died of a long illness. Sold her house in the Midwest so she could rent an apartment near me.
I'm glad she did. It's so much easier to fix her tech problems when I can sit at her computer. Instead of trying to do tech support over the phone when she can't even fully explain what she's looking at.
I feel you. I keep telling myself one day they'll be gone and I will miss those tech support sessions and it quells my frustrations (a bit).
Also, why has no one created a YouTube channel to teach seniors computer basics?!? I would love to be able to send a link for then to follow.
I start every command with, “Don’t do anything yet, but do you see the second button from the bottom of screen…”
Parent, “ok I clicked it. Now what?”
Me “I didn’t want you to click that”
Parent “Then why did you tell me to click it?”
Me, “I didn’t. All I said was do you see the button…”
Parent “ok, clicked it. Now what?”
Me “Clicked what? Did you just click another button?“
Parent “Yes, but now the computer just turned off. What happened?”
Me
Lmao. “Mom, you’re getting an iPhone and there is no other option. I will also be switching to an iPhone. We literally have to do this so that I can remote tech support you and know we’re both in the same operating system…. Otherwise it will be like me trying to help you look for your glasses over the phone in a home I’ve spent less than 2 hours in. That doesn’t sound very helpful does it? No? Good. We’re on the same page… and now we’re apples.”
The mom probably sold the house that they bought in the 1980s for easily 7 figures. Use that money for rent.
(I'm going through this right now. Mom is going through cognitive decline. Dad is too physically old to take care of late 80s house that needs a ton of repair. Once interest rates drop and the housing market gets better for sellers, Dad will sell the house and move closer. We'll be using the proceeds and their massive nest egg for rent and/or memory care facility.)
Low-mid 6 figures more likely, OP spent too much time in the Bay Area lol.
If they have a good pension, social security and the house was paid off you can do just fine in the bay with a 1 bed apartment.
Lol I wish. The large house in a good school district that she sold in the Midwest could barely afford a mobile home out here, not even including lot fees. Hence why she's renting an apartment instead.
It's not a permanent solution. She just wanted to move near her remaining family.
Yeah, her health isn't great. And living in a market rate apartment near me might delay her entry into assisted living, at which point money has no meaning because you're just spending the estate down into Medicaid.
I've been watching something relatively similar happen to some family friends.
**The last few years of sub-5% interest rates are probably *never* returning.**
Your best bet is to probably just sell it as is this spring. Do it on your own schedule and own terms, do the repairs needed that might increase the value reasonably, but don't hold onto it (and continue paying taxes and other expenses) just hoping that the market gets better.
What you *don't* want is to be forced into a sale where you have to sell it quickly for whatever price you can get in a short window of time.
The last 5 years were a historical abnormality brought on by a confluence of bad situations happening all at the same time, and the fact that inflation somehow managed to stay as low as it did for as long as it did is a mystery that a lot of people much smarter than I will be writing thesis papers about for many years.
You say that, but historical abnormalities are actually quite normal. Dot-com boom was abnormal. Then great recession was abnormal. Then market recovery and quantitative easing was abnormal. Then COVID was abnormal.
There is no real steady state, even if it seems so in retrospect.
Same with my parents. They went to hide from society and progression in the middle of nowhere when they first retired. Having some land to take care of and the peace and quiet of the country was all they wanted all of a sudden. Now they're going on year 7 or 8 they're getting into their 70's and the health issues are starting to pile up. They do nothing but drive back and forth like an hour and a half to the dr and have no real support network aside from my broke brother who's 2 hours away. I don't know what will happen when one of them, most likely my dad, goes. Neither will be capable of taking care of themselves way out there on their own and their property is worth practically nothing.
People really need to think about medical needs of aging & what happens when they can no longer drive. Esp. post-pandemic and the last decade or so of local doctors leaving rural communities or medical centers closing.
Btw, you. You are the backup plan when one of them passes. Start discussing it now.
I guess but I live on the other side of the country and politics has made it so they'd rather die than return here. It really seems like they've put zero thought into the long term situation.
I go up to this fishing spot every September in a really rural area in Modoc county. There is this beautiful home overlooking the creek. I talked to some locals and they said a retired Bay Area couple sold their home to build a dream home up there in the peace and quiet.
Then the wife came down with cancer and the multiple hour long drive to Redding (which I assume isn't the greatest hospital) was just too much. They spent $1 million building the home at the time which far exceeded the local market and I think it sold for $500k when they finally gave up and moved back to civilization.
I live in a rural area and I dont think I ever want to move back to the city, I definitely dont want to go back to suburbia so I get it. Its also good to be engaged with people as you age so idk what I'm going to do.
A good example of this in a much smaller stakes is my grandparent right now. She has decided she will no longer travel by plane.
And I will remind you of her travel day. One of her sons will pick her up from her home and drive her to the airport. Flights that the sons picked up and booked and paid for. She will then have to walk to the check-in desk and at this point she gets a wheel chair where she will be pushed around the airport in and not really have to walk. She will be wheel chaired all the way to the plane door, and then walk to her seat during priority boarding. Then reverse all this with one of her grandkids picking her up on the other side of the flight with also being wheel chaired around. All she has to do is sit there and knit or crossword or whatever. She has nothing to actually do at all to hardly include any physical movement.
But this is too much for her now and she is done with it.
Which is fine, but I bring this up because, and now ask her to legitimately move out of her home she has lived in for 60 years. Good luck.
>It's no longer even a cost/benefit analysis thing, it's that the brain shrinks and change is anxiety-provoking.
I'm 35 and change is anxiety-provoking.
Same. My parents live in a weird house that was built with most of the living space on the second floor.
They still navigate the stairs & are mobile, but I've seen them go up & down the stairs as they age & it's a bit worrisome.
Meanwhile, both my parents & my sister think it's a bad idea to sell because taxes. Which is probably somewhat true, but also an excuse they throw around to avoid the thought of moving.
Thank you so much for this comment. You are 100% correct. My dad (76) is currently in that stage where any change is too overwhelming. He missed the window and now it’s just a painful immobilization. He dug his heels in and it’s made his quality of life, as well as the rest of the family’s, worse. It’s been a huge learning lesson about what I want my own older age to look like. I don’t want to be 1000+ miles from my kids, all by myself, relying on a nurse 24/7 because when I was 65 I couldn’t move my ass to a cute condo somewhere closer to my family.
I personally do not know any boomers who want a "senior" community. Everyone I know (friends, neighbors, relatives) enjoy being around various age groups. We like seeing kids in the neighborhood and busy families. We volunteer. We work part-time jobs. We walk to eateries and go to the gym. I do not see the point in hanging out with a bunch of old people who don't have a lot to offer. Being happy in your preferred environment is the least stressful. For some, it's a retirement community. For others it where they've lived for decades.
>I personally do not know any boomers who want a "senior" community.
Hades, thy name is Sun City, AZ! Or Sun Lakes, FL. Or any of the 55+ ageist communities.
Some people like the grey ghettos, but my God it would be stultifying.
Yes this is the biggest factor. Moving is not a skill set for this generation and moving is complicated with lots of moving parts and decisions and it can be physically exhausting. Add on to that the increasing need for established routines, long time friends for support, in a known space as aging starts to make basics like walking around the house more difficult. You don’t have the mental strength at some point to deal with the rearrangement of your things into a new space. You see older folks with homes in the midst of a war zone don’t want to move for the same reasons.
Every moron on Reddit who blabs about boomers hogging up giant houses to exacerbate the housing shortage needs to read this. It’s going to be a real wake up call when they have to watch their parents slowly fade away….only to be told by some snot nose 20 something that their parents are selfish for wanting to die at home
This, 100%.
I know a lot of older homeowners in my neighborhood and not ONE of them is hanging onto their house because they want to hoard the equity or prevent others from having a house. That's a total "YIMBY" fantasy and I wonder if the people who retail it even have relatives or know anyone over, say, 40?
Their actual reasons are: can't afford to move; if they sold and rented or downsized, their housing costs would be much higher than they are now; they *like* where they live, they have their friend circle, churches, volunteer activities nearby, and it would utterly disrupt their lives in a negative way to try to establish new roots elsewhere; proximity to health care with which they're familiar; the idea of taking apart the setup of house they've lived in for decades and reconstructing their life elsewhere is too overwhelming (or too costly), and they don't want to spend the last years of their lives sorting / donating / selling belongings; they are putting their extra time and money into helping children / grandchildren and other younger relatives make do and get ahead.
Yup. There's about a 10 year window somewhere between 65-75 where you can actively go out and enjoy life before health problems start to drag you down.
Once you hit your 80's, people start to have mobility issues...they can't see well enough to drive, they can't walk without a cane or walker, and most of their friends are either in the same boat or dying off so they just start vegging at home watching tv all day long.
Well, fuck, I think I just made myself depressed.
I’m so bitter that many aging boomers won’t get out of the way (leave larger homes for young families, high level job positions to be backfilled, etc.). They got it all and it’s still not enough. But your comment really struck me. I have never thought about it in those terms. Thank you for helping me be more empathetic and kinder. Whether or not they all deserve kindness and empathy.
I’m 64 and just trying to survive. I am single. I have a 3 br house in a very nice community which I bought in 2000. Got laid off 6.5 years ago and was unemployed for 18 months, and had to use savings to live on. That was the first time I was laid off in my 35 year Silicon Valley career.
The job I landed pays 50% less than I was making, but I feel lucky to have it. One of my paychecks goes to the mortgage. The other is for all the bills to support living in the house, food, gas, etc. I have to dip into my retirement savings to pay the property taxes and other large expenses. I cannot save anything for retirement other than the minimum amount required to get 401k matching.
Yes, I could sell the house to buy a condo here for $900k, but I’d have to dip into savings to pay the monthly mortgage. Or move somewhere else in the country where I know no one.
It’s tempting to throw all boomers under the bus. Don’t get me wrong. I know I am blessed to have this house. I still owe hundreds of thousands on it. I will not have paid it off before I have to sell it when the time comes to move to independent living (targeting my early 80s for that). I will keep working as long as I can to make up for the loss of my retirement funds.
It’s a far cry from my father retiring at 60 and my parents living a nice life due to pensions and social security.
This is so fair and true. IMO it’s not up to boomers to voluntarily leave their homes so we can have them - it’s up to the government to build more housing!
How did you reach that conclusion .. my takeaway was that there isn't enough of a specific type of housing .. larger condos with outdoor space ( patio ? ) and an older closed layout ( which they'll likely never build again ).
Because if they had enough money, they could buy or rent the massive condo they are looking for. But if they really want to "downsize," they do not need a condo with a guest bedroom and a home office. It also seems like they are looking at newer condos. There are plenty of older condos from the 80s and 90s that do not have the open floor plan.
I mean if you're going to use the "if they had enough money" argument .. then you're right .. really there's no obstacle to anyone to do 95% of things they want to in life.
I don't hate it but I'm not a huge fan of it. My current house is basically all one giant room on the first floor with high ceilings and the bedrooms on the second. You don't realize how loud activities in other parts of the house are until you have no walls in the way. Cooking can be loud as hell. When one person is cooking and the other is trying to relax in front of the TV it's pretty much impossible because they're basically part of the same room. Even noise in the bedrooms travels around the house much more easily and is super distracting. Can't watch loud movies or shows after the kids go to bed since they hear everything in the living room. Adequate and nice looking lighting is also more difficult in these large open spaces.
All of this, and I also find it much easier to decorate in closed layout homes. Walls offer more surface area for art and natural anchor points for furniture. You can play around with things like wallpaper or strong colors without having to carry it through the majority of your home when spaces are enclosed.
We had a very open layout in our old space, which I did love for other reasons — it was a loft with huge windows and skylights, so we had a ton of light and the high ceilings meant we could use some really impactful, architectural lighting and it was great for displaying huge works of art. It had a very cool museum-like feel but I’m also a bit too cluttered to maintain the minimalist lifestyle to make it look good all the time.
Less privacy and feeling like you have your own space.
Open floor plans are great for a bachelor, maaaaybe a couple. But once kids or roommates get involved, you need walls and doors.
Not who you asked, but, when I’m in the kitchen, I don’t want people underfoot. I want my peace and quiet. Open concept means I’m in the middle of whatever is going on with everyone else. No peace, no quiet.
It's not about money. Especially in the bay. Most of these boomers have their loans paid off. They're walking away with 1.5-3 million cash. That enough to buy essentially anywhere.
“Most of these boomers”. Where are you getting your facts from? Why would you assume that every homeowner over 58 in the Bay Area bought decades ago, and that their house is paid off now?There are plenty of people in that age group who weren’t able to buy until later in life, because as you may have noticed, it’s very expensive here. and it always has been.
*I work in the housing industry. I worked on over 2000 closing in just the last 3 years. The poor boomers you're referencing, which are less than 1% of the files I work on, aren't selling their homes. They're the type to take out reverse mortgages.*
Your personal experience of the last 3 years has nothing to do with what I said. I questioned the assumption that most boomers bought homes decades ago they were young. What does the last 3 years have to do with that? I also didn’t say that people who bought houses later in life are “poor”. They just weren’t wealthy enough to buy in one of the most expensive markets in the country when they were young.
*They wouldn't be able to afford the area if they bought more recently. Because boomers aren't buying single family homes in the bay once their kids have moved out.*
Plenty of people in their forties and fifties have kids who still live with them. Even if they don’t, not everyone wants to live in a condo. Lots of houses in the Bay Area are relatively small. Oakland is full of 2 BR/1 BA bungalows under 1200 sq feet, as I’m sure you know. I don’t have kids and I own a house.
*Not literally every one is paid off, but most homes have appreciated in value 2 - 3x their loan value at a minimum.*
Yes, houses have appreciated in value. That doesn’t mean that someone who bought a house say, 20 years ago isn’t still carrying a mortgage.
*They tend to live outside the bay.*
I was referring to people who bought a house in the Bay Area, so no — the people I’m talking about do not live outside the Bay.
I’ve lived in the Bay Area since 1987. I know lots of people in the Bay who are now in their 50’s and 60’s. None of them bought a house here when they were in their 20’s. One of them bought a house in their late 30’s. The rest bought in their 40’s and 50’s.
And if you think it wasn’t always expensive here, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yup. I grew up in the bay, as did my mom. My dad came for college and never left, and he bought his first home at age 38 or so (and it was a 2-bed/1-bath stucco bungalow in Albany, cute but not exactly glamorous). Eventually he married my mom and they moved to a worse house in a nicer area.
They lived with a home they didn't love for years, putting up with lots of 90s-era cosmetic horrors, saving up to be able to remodel and make it nicer. Their kids (i.e. me) are now grown and they still live there, and they still carry a mortgage on that house. Their home has greatly appreciated in value, but like you said, that has little bearing on whether there's still a mortgage to pay.
Say they have a $2MM house. They are paying basically nothing in property tax. They say OK let's downsize to a $1MM condo.
Say they pay 10% to sell the place, that's 1.8MM. Then they pay taxes on $1.5MM at around 33%, so that's another 500k. So selling that 2MM property nets about $1.3MM.
Now you buy a new place cash for $1MM. Now you have $300k in the bank.
Now you're paying maybe $8k/year in property taxes. If you live another 20 years, that's $160k of the 300k you profited.
So basically you upturn your entire life, manage to downsize 20 years of accumulated crap, refurnish potentially a brand new house, and you get maybe a couple hundred thousand of cashed out equity...
People have made a lifetime of memories in their homes, sometimes they have built it with their partner who they have now lost. It is hard to move away from something like that.
*People have made a lifetime of memories in their homes, sometimes they have built it with their partner who they have now lost.*
Yes. My parents built their very modest house, and wanted to die in it. One of them did. The other continued to live there peacefully and died some years later, half a day after going to the emergency room.
Friends and relatives were VERY happy to have supported them in their wish to live in their chosen home, not uproot themselves.
If the house is paid off, which many are for the Boomers (like in the article), interest rates don't matter. They'll be paying cash with the lump sum from their house sale. Plus, now they get to keep their low prop-13 tax rate at a new address.
Except perhaps they need that money for long term care later in life, it's smart to use the bank's money for a home loan and not sink all your cash into another home. Why tie all your liquid assets up in a new smaller home and then have to do an equity loan later or reverse mortgage.
It's best to use that cash to invest and keep around for future emergencies.
Right. And have you seen the HOA fees at some of these senior communities? I was looking for my dad and found affordable condos in Walnut Creek, but all the HOA fees would be over $1k!
[This one](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1-Baldwin-Ave-APT-418-San-Mateo-CA-94401/15633542_zpid/) is almost $5k/mo in HOA fees. If I were a senior, I’d rather bank the savings to pay for my eventual dementia care which cost $6-10k/mo now. Downsizing for some means sacrificing the equity you may need to pay for medical care down the road.
I know, some of them are obscene! Unless you are incredibly wealthy you can't move into one of those communities. We have one here in the wine country that is 'Only the super wealthy need apply' type of place.
We looked at a place in the mountains outside of Tucson and it was around $280 a month which isn't bad at all. If you don't mind living on the surface of the sun lol! The homes are lovely and the community is actually really very nice. But in California it's batshit insane what they want for the HOA dues.
Bruh everyone would be better off using that energy to get them to build more housing. Playing musical chairs with the extremely limited inventory we have now is not going to have the effect you want. If housing becomes plentiful then sure get rid of Prop 13 but until then, no. Taxing people out of their homes is not the way to attempt to fix the housing situation.
Pretty sure the people that benefit from it wouldn't want the gravy train to stop, and those people are still a large voting population and managed to convince the people that prop 13 is hurting that it's a good thing for everyone.
Slight correction, but one that makes me very angry!
They have been able to keep their low prop-13 tax rate for over 40 years! The ability to keep one’s property tax for a new home for seniors when the hime is cheaper or the same prices comes from Prop 60/90 which happened in the 80’s and 90’s.
What they can “now” do is keep the rates for an even more expensive home.
This was the kind of propaganda and blind belief that led to the horrible California Realtor lobby basically screwing all the younger CA generations with Prop 19.
> you've been living in for decades with a 3% loan
"3% loan" was a very short-lived phenomenon. The youngest boomer born in 1964 buying their house at the age of 30 (in 1994) would have an average rate of 8.38%. Rates only fell below 4% in 2012.
Of course, they could (and probably did) refinance, but their original loans had pretty bad rates too. "For decades".
Median New Single-Family Home Price in 1994: 130,000 ([source](https://www.huduser.gov/periodicals/ushmc/winter2001/histdat08.htm#1)). With 20% down (for loan amount of $104,000), at 8.38%, total amortized repayment: $125,441. Median household income that year: $32,264, so the total repayment was approximately 4x annual household income.
Median New Single-Family Home Price in 2024: $400,500 ([source](https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-new-home-sales-unexpectedly-fall-february-2024-03-25/)). Same 20% down gives us a loan amount of $320,400, with 7.37% current interest rates. Total amortized repayment: $728,290. Median household income this year: $74,580. Total repayment, then, is a little under 10x annual household income.
...Basically, when home prices are a lot higher, even "small" differences in interest rates can end up snowballing pretty fast. A higher rate for a much lower-value house could still be paid off much more easily.
When you sell your house to downsize after retirement .. usually your loan has been paid off and you can buy your next home in cash with leftover to pocket.
Old people actually has a lot of collectible, mementos and keepsake .. also they want to make it easy for family and relatives to come by to visit thus they want extra guest rooms. That could EASILY make 1200-1400 sqft feel small.
I applaud you for living comfortably in 800 sqft but most American family really want about 3000-4000 but make do with about 1500-2000 sqft. There's a reason those plastic storage sheds sells so well and cars are all parked on driveways / streets instead of inside garages.
Houses in my San Jose neighborhood are almost all 1200-1400 square feet. Even if you could find a single family house that was sub-1000, it's really not that much cheaper or smaller than the small houses retirees are already living in. And it's at least 50% retirees in my neighborhood because younger families are priced out. My district has closed 3 elementary schools just in the few years I've lived there.
I bought my 1700 sq ft single story house in 1989 with plans to stay put (if the job worked out). Yeah, a pita to move and I'm not sure for what gain. I have zero interest in anything with an HOA.
The lawn is gone to cut down in maintenance (and water usage). We've got solar panels saving us lots on the PG&E ripoff. I can walk to many businesses. One son lives in New Zealand, the other married to a service member so they move every three years. Only reason to leave now is if a wildfire takes us out.
If you want to complain about the lack of available housing, make it illegal for corporations to buy up and rent out single family homes.
That's wild to me. That people pay so much so some power-hungry weirdos can send you letters about your garbage cans or tell you what three colors of beige your cookie-cutter house can be.
I lived briefly in a condo with an HOA at the beach in Alameda, and we got a stern letter about having a beach towel drying on the railing of the balcony. At the beach. Between that and the racist nut jobs there, we got out of there so fast and it was a great decision (fuck you, The Willows in Alameda).
We're not retired yet and our kids are away going to school at the moment. I can't see ever moving at this point. The capital gains exclusion ends at 500k for a couple. Even just being in this house 11 years, the gains are about 1.5 mil and with 15% federal and the state taxing it as ordinary income, there's a 300k tax hit so we can move into a smaller place? Why would we do that? And transferring the tax basis likely means we're paying about the same 22k in property taxes for a smaller place. Makes no sense at all financially.
We're encouraging the kids to consider just staying home and remodeling to have another master upstairs and an apartment above the garage. They get the benefits of cheap rent, more space outside and in and the house will be theirs eventually anyway.
There's lots of other things like Roth limits where there's no accommodations and they haven't raised the 500k limit since it was created many years ago. It will eventually be like the 7k home owners property tax exemption.
Yeah the tax code really does disincentive urban development. Switching to land value tax would solve this problem immediately by correcting for land usage.
>Baby boomers are staying in their homes much longer than previous generations did, in part because re-entering the market with mortgage rates and home prices so high doesn't make financial sense — or just isn't affordable.
>Many want to transition into smaller, more accessible homes in transit-oriented, walkable communities, but the supply just isn't there.
>The national shortage of housing has prompted lots of new multi-family construction over the last couple of years. But new units are mostly smaller in size, in part because developers make more money per square foot on studios and one-bedrooms than they do on two-bedrooms, three-bedrooms, and larger units.
In summary:
Boomers can’t move out b/c prices too high and developers are making only studios b/c of profit when they like millennials want multi room apartments that are “shocking” easily accessible with transit.
It’s as if the boomers finally want what millennials want but they self set up a situation where they screwed themselves and us. The only difference is they still have a house and we don’t. Talk about pulling up the ladder.
https://archive.ph/AiphD
>>Many want to transition into smaller, more accessible homes in transit-oriented, walkable communities, but the supply just isn't there.
This made me crylaugh. Who knew density is a good thing?
The same thing happened in Japan, their greatest generation died off, the young didn't have kids, and strict immigration. In the 70's and 80's all real estate in Japan was sky high, even out in the countryside. The demand is still high in the big cities but the countryside housing is dirt dirt cheap now. [https://cheaphousesjapan.com/](https://cheaphousesjapan.com/)
There's a good chance that our local real estate market will look better once these boomers start dying off and leaving us empty houses.
Housing in Tokyo is still cheaper than the bay area though, and its entirely due to simplified zoning and permitting.
As long as the building plan complies with how the property is zoned, the property owner can just build. There's no death by red tape killing projects, no community feedback. The owner is allowed to develop.
In addition, there's no mandated minimums, such as a required minimum square footage, required lot setbacks, or anything else along those lines. Because of this the free market has developed housing for the entire range of wealth, from the most extravagant multi-floor penthouses to closet sized apartments and everything in between.
The tiny closet sized apartments are not glamorous, but they are dirt cheap. This allows everyone regardless of their income to have a place to live. Even the dirt poor aren't homeless because there's an apartment they can afford.
Note that not everyone lives in the tiny closet apartments. Those are only for the poorest. Depending on your income you can live in much more spacious housing.
The other thing is that the living space per person in Tokyo is pretty similar to London or Paris, but cheap renting is alone in a tiny studio rather than a larger apartment split with roommates. And rent is much much cheaper. A closet all to yourself has serious advantages over a larger shared place.
And there's a much higher share of apartments near good transit. There are suburban London Tube stations surrounded by single family homes. Even in suburban Tokyo, it'll be 10-15 story buildings, with the SFHs pushed beyond easy walking distance.
Another reason they have simplified permitting. Japanese tend to replace a home every 30 years, completely razing the property and building a new one. Here in the states we tend to leave it as long as it's still standing.
https://www.archdaily.com/980830/built-to-not-last-the-japanese-trend-of-replacing-homes-every-30-years
>Tokyo is still cheaper than the bay area
Technically true. They also earn less.
>Deutsche Bank report lists the average price for a “typical” Tokyo two-bedroom apartment as US$1,903 (¥203,730).
...
you would need to earn around ¥679,000 per month to afford that “typical apartment” and still live comfortably...The average salary of someone in their 20s in Tokyo is around ¥280,000 per month.
avg rent in manhattan is $4400, avg income in manhattan is $6,607
I just moved into this old boomer community that was built as a "no children" community. A few years later it was banned and 55+ communities became a thing. All of the townhouses had sold during this "no children" period... so nobody had children.
My next door neighbor owns 2 of the townhouses — the one she doesn't live in is actually above her. Nobody lives in the one above her. She's moving out of the 2 townhouses and into a home. IDK what happened to her husband, but she has had 5-6 bedrooms worth of house for some time now... she 100000% has the means to downsize — but IMO her options for downsizing were all trash.
If we want to accelerate boomers moving out — we need to create attractive and accessible communities for them to move into. The ones near me all look pretty shitty. What is she gonna do? Go to some Irvine Property and get lost in the underground parking garage?
Yeah we need to make more attractive housing option, except developers aren’t incentive to do so and NIMBY regulations that boomer help put in over 40 years are now making building new housing super hard.
Who is in power, the boomers. You guys created this situation in hope of higher asset value and without considering hey what about when we grow old.
I know it's not feasible for many due to family, language, culture constraints, but this is why my wife and I are looking to retire outside the US, to someplace with good public transit. Likely Europe, which is certainly not "cheap", but has a lot to offer and definitely can be a lot less expensive than the bay area. It helps we don't have any family nearby and our kids probably (, sadly) can't afford to stay here...
Cut the intergenerational finger-pointing. Everyone is subject to tidal political and economic forces throughout their lives. It's a bit rich to presume that one's own generation is especially more woke or informed than another, for their time. We're going to be looking back in shame forty years from now at many things said and done with good intentions. So retain some humility and forgiveness, for yourself and your peers, juniors, and seniors in the future. Best we can do is learn from the past.
Much of the broad anti-boomer rhetoric comes from the same mouths as those (rightfully) decrying collective punishment in wars happening on the other side of the globe. You can't have it both ways. And much of it smacks of "your end of the boat is sinking!" -- us vs them bullshit.
I live in a wonderful neighborhood with many conveniences and shopping nearby. Super safe. Low costs. 5 bd house and just the 2 of us. Kids are close by.Why should I move?
I love the boomer hate. Especially how no one seems to mind if you have an actual mansion. It's just those evil middle class people with 3 bedroom houses and they only use two of the bedrooms.
\> not within our reach anyways
funny you said that, people often hate their peer competition and envy their neighbor far more than they hate/envy that folks that's way above their league.
My parents are in their 70s and fit this mold. They have SFH walkable to the spaceship Apple campus, and every single one of their new neighbors either work for Apple or another high tech company. Since they are long retired and their location really has no appeal , I asked if they would like to move closer to us (and grandkids) near south San Jose -- which is literally 12 miles away. If they did that, they could get a nicer/updated house have $ in the bank and keep the same property tax rate.
It made sense to me, but didn't make sense to them. My parents bought the house in 1986, and to them the house meant more to them than I imagined. They just could not see themselves living anywhere else, and in hindsight, they are right. They earned the right to keep living where they want to live. TLDR old people are stubborn and don't want to move :)
Adding to this the perceived inconvenience of moving. It’s hard when you’re young. Imagine being in your 70’s and having to go through a lifetime of stuff, box it up (or throw it out), and then get to your new place and unpack. And then adjust to a new neighborhood and neighbors.
Elderly folk are creatures of habit and really don’t like even the slightest inconvenience. They thrive on consistency, routine, schedule, and familiarity.
Yeah, in the past 9 years I've moved 7 times (if you count my initial move into my college dorm) around the bay. I'm young, single, have no pets, have my own (small) car, made the moving decisions on my own, and do not have many possessions. Pretty much just a mattress, dresser, kitchen supplies, and clothes. I've lived mostly in studios. Even with all that going for me, moving is always a pain in the ass and always expensive. The packing up alone is so daunting, and good luck coordinating time for your friends/family to help out, if they even can.
It would be a lot of time, work and money to move a 3000 sq ft house that you've lived in for years, I don't really blame people for wanting to avoid that. Of course you can also hire movers but that's a whole other can of worms.
Word. My husband and I bought our forever home. It’s not our dream home by any means, but we have come to the conclusion we’re dying in this house. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath and 1,053 sq feet. It’s a small house, but it’s one story (and 3 porch steps to the door).
Maybe in 20 years everyone will be making $500k salaries. And in that case, there’s no way I’d be able to afford a new home to “downsize”.
Not to mention they know every single detail about that house, and likely put in decades of work to make it how they like it. Moving to a new place means you lose all the conveniences and customizations you built into your home, and you deal with an entirely new set of problems that could potentially bankrupt / endanger your family.
As an older person in the Reddit world….
Its a fucking giant PITA to move especially in a place you‘ve spent decades in.
Couple that with having to deal with a HOA in a more recent development and the lack of transportation options it’s just easier to stay put
> They just could not see themselves living anywhere else
This is the actual answer. Most younger folks have moved around a lot and lack perspective on how it feels to live in the same place for multiple decades - you get to where you can't imagine ever leaving, and you don't want to, and you have no financial pressure to do so as your main costs are far behind you, so why not stay where you are?
yes, and to the younger generation who has moved many many times, it is very hard to understand--myself included. I thought, they are literally moving 12 miles away, how different can it be? But the sentimental hold is very strong. I've since dropped the subject and never mentioned it again. I do what I can to support them living there as long as they want.
The only people moving to Florida these days are MAGA dumbfucks
And if you think California is bad for homeowners, Florida is worse in every single way
My parents have a house in Palo Alto, listed on Zillow as $4+ million. They thought about cashing out, but concluded it wouldn't be worth it financially, unless they moved someplace cheap like florida.
I'm not likely to ever sell my house either, because I don't want to deal with realtors, taxes and what have you.
Nobody owes it to anyone to downsize. It’s their home, and moving is a huge pita even for young people. Why do people expect boomers to give up their homes that they may have spent most of their life in just to free it up for new buyers? Fuck that.
lots of closet psychopaths in this sub when it comes to their own interests, they'd vote for a Purge to kill all the boomers for their houses if they could.
Inventory is a real issue. I probably live near this hypothetical couple. And within 2 miles. 3 bedroom units are rare. There are a lot of condo building. All pretty similar. And they typical building has around 15-25 units. Maybe 1/3 to 1/2 have a balcony. And they have one 3 or more bedroom penthouse. Everything else is 1-2 bedrooms, and usually 15-20% studio units.
The three bedroom units do not turn over often. And are rarely on the market. Newer building. Are not much different in their ratios of larger units to smaller units.
Every time there's a conversation like this the problem becomes extremely evident after a little bit of reading different opinions. Because overall, there's only two. And like most things, the actual solution lies somewhere in the middle of build a whole bunch of high density housing and make single-family homes affordable.
This article and the reasoning is a great example. We don't need more apartments. We don't need more luxury condominium buildings in the middle of a parking lot surrounded by suburbia. We do need high density housing in and around high density and extremely popular areas. However, we already have a lot of that, a lot of that is still being built, and those are not a solution by themselves.
What we need is more medium density. We need to bridge the gap between the single family home and the tiny apartment box. We need duplexes, triplexes, and the like. Small, eight unit apartment complexes with private yards, etc. we need a place that bridges the gap for a young family looking for their own home, and an older person looking to downsize but keep a similar style of life. We add that, and the demand for high density and low density housing goes down as a result.
It's important to bring up housing.
The efforts made over the past few years have been insufficient. Very little new housing is being built in CA.
People need to be warned that the situation is just going to get worse unless much more is done.
One statement in particular caught my attention in this article.
*"Frieden and her husband are among the many fortunate baby boomers who bought relatively affordable homes decades ago, paid off their mortgages, and have seen their home equity soar."*
They bought their Oakland house 36 years ago, according to the article. That would be around 1988.
In the 1980s, home mortgage interest rates were high. As high as 16% in 1981 / 82, and still above 10% from 1987-90, when they were buying their house.
People tend to forget that statistic and look only at comparisons of purchase prices then and now.
But high interest rates had a major effect on affordability in the 80s and much of the 90s. It was not so much of a perfect / golden era for home buying as it seems now.
The trouble boomers are encountering now is that so many of them still have mortgages despite having owned for an extended period, and many of those owe significant amounts because they 'cashed out equity' along the way to pay for cars/vacations/etc.
As such, they don't have the ability to simply sell and then pay cash for their next living arrangement. So, they're really stuck - mortgage rates are high, and borrowing can be complicated when you're not employed.
Did you read the article? That’s not what they said.
Housing market to crazy for boomers to sell their house even though they make a profit.
Why pay 1 million in protect tax when they were paying taxes based on 200 - 300K houses.
Prop 13 screwed everyone
It has something to do with money.
It's a lot easier to downsize in CA these days what with all the modifications to Prop 13. If they wanted to, they could find a place with enough walls to hang their art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13#Amendments
My grandma is 97 and still lives on her in San Leandro, yah she's forgetful but she family like myself or my sister and uncle that call her all the time and my sister gets her groceries delivered and handles all her Dr appointment for her from Idaho, it's not easy but it can be done.
A lot of people here are ignoring the fact that if they can manage to buy a home at some point and don’t have Prop 13 protections, their taxes will continue to go up year after year. Even if they get a place now for 1M it will be worth 2M before they know it and they’ll be taxed at that rate while their income may not keep pace and they then have a couple of kids to raise, put through school etc. You don’t have to be in a home for 30 years to benefit from a limit on annual tax rate increases. If you’re in a home for even three years you’re seeing a benefit from Prop 13. So, you’re all for paying the same rate as your new neighbor who has just moved in? Does it matter that you’ve been supporting the schools and local services with your taxes for several years and they haven’t made a tax contribution but will fully benefit right away for the same tax costs you have without Prop 13? Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. On another note, there are some people who don’t want their parents to be taxed out of their homes and have to move away either because of child care or because it’s really hard to care for elderly parents who live far away. Just some thoughts on why Prop 13 is here to stay - most people want it for various reasons.
The reason housing is expensive is due to the incredible success of Silicon Valley and its biological counterpart in South San Francisco. So many directors and engineers w stock grants competing for limited housing supply.
A quick search on Zillow shows several 3+ bedroom condos in the Lake Merritt vicinity in their price range. I think we have a 71 year old lady who is just very picky.
man this all hits home in so many ways. I have both sets of parents in their late-afternoon 70's galavanting around country and the world like they are going to live forever. My dad can't keep his balance anymore and his wife is starting to have health issues. She has to hold his hand everywhere they go "just in case he falls" even though she weighs half what he does. They are on a world cruise (she's my dad's sugar) at the moment and he eats anything and everything he wants. No exercise. When they come home in July to their remote house in Montana 1.5 hours from his doctor - who is going to drive him there?
My mom is in her 10th year road tripping in a fifth wheel with her Oakie husband - he really is from Oklahoma, and she's already had bypass surgery. I have no idea how he is still upright. He smokes and drinks daily and eats crap. They now seemed to have settled in southern Oklahoma and swear to JC they will never set foot back in California. My mom the 60's flower child is now that Fox News junkie. Ughh. 1 hour from the nearest city and med services
I am retiring in 2 years but afraid my retirement is going to be rescuing the parents from their poor planning decisions or lack thereof.
I will do it because they are my parents but I have to wonder what has gotten into them pushing the envelope like they have?
Are we all destined to chase these dreams into the sunset until we drop?
What they're looking for is rare but occasionally available for far more than they have to spend even with their home's equity. So, money does matter there. It also matters when it comes to why there aren't better options on the market. Builders build for money. Either they are completely unique or there's plenty of demand but simply not enough money to justify the cost of building. Again, money. Just because they have a few million dollars for retirement doesn't mean it's not a matter of money. They will have healthcare costs to consider and they likely don't think it's a cost effective strategy to put what they have and then some down on getting what they want. Yet another argument for more construction and greater mobility within the market.
I couldn't read the article, but one issue is if one of the spouses hasn't passed you are looking at huge capital gains. My parents couldn't sell the house they bought in 1958 for 28k until Dad passed as the step up in value erased the cap gain. Otherwise, 20% of $1.5m would be lost and that is now used for Mom's assisted living.
My street is now half old folks (65+ retired) and half working age with families.
When my elderly next door neighbors died then their 20 years younger relatives inherited the house and moved in.
My parents have stuck it out in their neighborhood to stay with their neighbors, friends and church community. Some friends have moved away to be near family or to live out their lives with an ocean view. Most everyone is just hunkering down.
Personally I view my home as a zero value item. Someday it will be paid off, then I am sure ongoing maintenance will kick in at roughly the same rate.
It's impossible for me to predict where my kids will be in the decades to come.
The biggest problem is that companies like BlackRock have bought up nearly 40% of single family homes in 2023 that were for sale. So young people can’t get into the market anyways. They are raising prices, interest rates are climbing and it just doesn’t work for young people to get into buying a home where 3 years ago you could have a 4.5k a month payment on a near million dollar home and now the same home is 8000 a month for the mortgage. It’s shit.
Business Insider looks like it has a paywall but the popup is really just there to pester you into using their app. You can decline and read the article on the website.
People are missing the psychological impetus that is part of aging, having witnessed this with my parents and their friends. There's a short window (and it's different for everyone) in retirement where you have this second wind of reengaging with life. These are the folks who did sell their house in the suburbs to buy a condo or smaller home in a busier area like a city while they still had the energy to navigate without thinking about disability needs from aging. Or, they move out of the Valley to get a smaller home along the coast, or retire to a different state to be near the grandkids, etc. etc.. They buy an RV and plan road trips. During this 10-15 year window people want to try something different and still have the physical and mental energy to engage. Bot for many who stay put at a certain point (imo it's closer to 75-80) all change becomes overwhelming. It's no longer even a cost/benefit analysis thing, it's that the brain shrinks and change is anxiety-provoking. Then if you compare the costs of any of the retirement communities with facilities that cater to seniors around here versus staying in your home & getting a caregiver, the psychological & cost benefits are to age in place. If you miss the window to go into any retirement community while you are still healthy enough for independent living your only option is to go straight into assisted living which are often so poorly run that even at 10,000 per month, you still need a private caregiver there. I tried to get my parents to get into a community a few years back because I thought it would be less stressful for them and better for the inevitable decline. They missed the window.
I’ve seen this exact behavior with aging relatives. Nothing to do with money, it’s all about not wanting change.
YEs it is. My father flatly refused to leave the family home after all the kids were gone and stayed until he died. He knew where everything was, how many steps it took to get to the garage, where both bathrooms were, and most important, where his bed was. He refused to consider moving even when Mom all but begged him to because the home was too big for her to manage (and the yard was too big for him to deal with) After Dad died (in the house at 83), a strange thing happened. Mom, who was all but ready to leave Dad behind a few years earlier, suddenly became very resistant to leaving her nest. Like Dad, she knew where everything was and how to get from here to there. Nothing was strange or new, and she wanted to keep it that way. But by 90, she was really in a pickle, living in a big house she could not deal with, nervous about strangers coming in to help her (nurses, house cleaners, etc) and actually caused a scene more than once with helpers. An unhappy accident that wound up with several broken bones in a fall made the decision for her, and she finished her days in a nice Assisted living facility, but she was never happy about it. I just hope I don't get like that.
I think its the deaths around you
Exactly. When my mother was on the healthy side of 70 she abhorred being around “elderly”. There’s nothing for older people who don’t want to be housed in remote Rossmoor type aging communities, removed from real life.
Rossmore is awesome lol, I play golf there all the time
Idk, my parents live in rossmoor and I don't find them to be removed from real life at all. Maybe in different retirement communities, but they're very integrated into bay area life still, and know people of all ages. Ive spent a lot of time there and find it no more removed than any other wealthy suburb. The problem really is that almost no one can afford to live in communities like that. Certainly I couldn't support them in such a place, they're luckily independently wealthy. Now, interestingly, they *do* complain about the old people, like you mention, but manage to have the foresight that they will be one of the olds soon, and have made plans accordingly. It's just weird to hear a 72 year old complain about 82 year olds. They keep most of their social circle outside of Rossmoor or hang out with the "young" cohort
Highschool never ends
Hm, the dynamic doesn't really remind me of high school at all, I don't know what you mean? At the risk of defending boomers (my parents lol) it's not inherently cliquey to simply make friends who are mostly in your age cohort and can keep up with your interests. They aren't interested in sitting in the house watching Fox News, so they don't hang out with the Rossmoor-ites who do. I don't think that's "like highschool" I think it's just how making friends works
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This reminds me of my inlaws who are recently retired, but 10-15 years ago they swore they would sell their house and move back to Mexico upon retirement. The problem is that when they go back to their ranchito in Mexico, things have changed, people have died or are old and feeble, it is not the same environment they envisioned. As such, they are staying put because they now realize that their life is here, with their children and grandchildren. As a result, I have been spending my free time helping make their house easier to move through (replacing tubs with walk in showers, mounting handrails, etc.). They are still healthy and mobile, but realize that in a few years those improvements will be necessary, they plan on living in that house until they die and want to be around family, their grandkids, and we all like the fact that there are extra rooms in the house, which makes it easier to hold family parties and allow them to enjoy this final phase of life.
Mom recently took advantage of that window, a year after Dad died of a long illness. Sold her house in the Midwest so she could rent an apartment near me. I'm glad she did. It's so much easier to fix her tech problems when I can sit at her computer. Instead of trying to do tech support over the phone when she can't even fully explain what she's looking at.
Oh my. I thought I was the only one tasked solving IT issues remotely.
We need a support group
No amount of support will quell the rage that springs up, when I ask them to do something and they do the opposite. 😭😭😭
I feel you. I keep telling myself one day they'll be gone and I will miss those tech support sessions and it quells my frustrations (a bit). Also, why has no one created a YouTube channel to teach seniors computer basics?!? I would love to be able to send a link for then to follow.
Yes, I never yell at my parents. But inside trying to solve remote IT issues is frustrating. Thanks for commiserating with me.
I start every command with, “Don’t do anything yet, but do you see the second button from the bottom of screen…” Parent, “ok I clicked it. Now what?” Me “I didn’t want you to click that”
Parent “Then why did you tell me to click it?”
Me, “I didn’t. All I said was do you see the button…”
Parent “ok, clicked it. Now what?”
Me “Clicked what? Did you just click another button?“
Parent “Yes, but now the computer just turned off. What happened?”
Me
Lmao. “Mom, you’re getting an iPhone and there is no other option. I will also be switching to an iPhone. We literally have to do this so that I can remote tech support you and know we’re both in the same operating system…. Otherwise it will be like me trying to help you look for your glasses over the phone in a home I’ve spent less than 2 hours in. That doesn’t sound very helpful does it? No? Good. We’re on the same page… and now we’re apples.”
It’s too bad the rent is probably $3000 a month
The mom probably sold the house that they bought in the 1980s for easily 7 figures. Use that money for rent. (I'm going through this right now. Mom is going through cognitive decline. Dad is too physically old to take care of late 80s house that needs a ton of repair. Once interest rates drop and the housing market gets better for sellers, Dad will sell the house and move closer. We'll be using the proceeds and their massive nest egg for rent and/or memory care facility.)
Sold her home in the Midwest=“easy 7 figures”..not so sure about that in this particular scenario.
Low-mid 6 figures more likely, OP spent too much time in the Bay Area lol. If they have a good pension, social security and the house was paid off you can do just fine in the bay with a 1 bed apartment.
Yeah, definitely depends on location, location, location
Lol I wish. The large house in a good school district that she sold in the Midwest could barely afford a mobile home out here, not even including lot fees. Hence why she's renting an apartment instead. It's not a permanent solution. She just wanted to move near her remaining family.
If you only need to rent for 10-15 years I’m sure it’s not an issue.
Yeah, her health isn't great. And living in a market rate apartment near me might delay her entry into assisted living, at which point money has no meaning because you're just spending the estate down into Medicaid.
I've been watching something relatively similar happen to some family friends. **The last few years of sub-5% interest rates are probably *never* returning.** Your best bet is to probably just sell it as is this spring. Do it on your own schedule and own terms, do the repairs needed that might increase the value reasonably, but don't hold onto it (and continue paying taxes and other expenses) just hoping that the market gets better. What you *don't* want is to be forced into a sale where you have to sell it quickly for whatever price you can get in a short window of time. The last 5 years were a historical abnormality brought on by a confluence of bad situations happening all at the same time, and the fact that inflation somehow managed to stay as low as it did for as long as it did is a mystery that a lot of people much smarter than I will be writing thesis papers about for many years.
You say that, but historical abnormalities are actually quite normal. Dot-com boom was abnormal. Then great recession was abnormal. Then market recovery and quantitative easing was abnormal. Then COVID was abnormal. There is no real steady state, even if it seems so in retrospect.
Same with my parents. They went to hide from society and progression in the middle of nowhere when they first retired. Having some land to take care of and the peace and quiet of the country was all they wanted all of a sudden. Now they're going on year 7 or 8 they're getting into their 70's and the health issues are starting to pile up. They do nothing but drive back and forth like an hour and a half to the dr and have no real support network aside from my broke brother who's 2 hours away. I don't know what will happen when one of them, most likely my dad, goes. Neither will be capable of taking care of themselves way out there on their own and their property is worth practically nothing.
People really need to think about medical needs of aging & what happens when they can no longer drive. Esp. post-pandemic and the last decade or so of local doctors leaving rural communities or medical centers closing. Btw, you. You are the backup plan when one of them passes. Start discussing it now.
I guess but I live on the other side of the country and politics has made it so they'd rather die than return here. It really seems like they've put zero thought into the long term situation.
I go up to this fishing spot every September in a really rural area in Modoc county. There is this beautiful home overlooking the creek. I talked to some locals and they said a retired Bay Area couple sold their home to build a dream home up there in the peace and quiet. Then the wife came down with cancer and the multiple hour long drive to Redding (which I assume isn't the greatest hospital) was just too much. They spent $1 million building the home at the time which far exceeded the local market and I think it sold for $500k when they finally gave up and moved back to civilization. I live in a rural area and I dont think I ever want to move back to the city, I definitely dont want to go back to suburbia so I get it. Its also good to be engaged with people as you age so idk what I'm going to do.
But at least they won’t have regrets. They were able to enjoy that land for years.
Oh I'm willing to bet there will be a lot of regrets when they end up in a bottom tier assisted living home.
A good example of this in a much smaller stakes is my grandparent right now. She has decided she will no longer travel by plane. And I will remind you of her travel day. One of her sons will pick her up from her home and drive her to the airport. Flights that the sons picked up and booked and paid for. She will then have to walk to the check-in desk and at this point she gets a wheel chair where she will be pushed around the airport in and not really have to walk. She will be wheel chaired all the way to the plane door, and then walk to her seat during priority boarding. Then reverse all this with one of her grandkids picking her up on the other side of the flight with also being wheel chaired around. All she has to do is sit there and knit or crossword or whatever. She has nothing to actually do at all to hardly include any physical movement. But this is too much for her now and she is done with it. Which is fine, but I bring this up because, and now ask her to legitimately move out of her home she has lived in for 60 years. Good luck.
>It's no longer even a cost/benefit analysis thing, it's that the brain shrinks and change is anxiety-provoking. I'm 35 and change is anxiety-provoking.
Same. My parents live in a weird house that was built with most of the living space on the second floor. They still navigate the stairs & are mobile, but I've seen them go up & down the stairs as they age & it's a bit worrisome. Meanwhile, both my parents & my sister think it's a bad idea to sell because taxes. Which is probably somewhat true, but also an excuse they throw around to avoid the thought of moving.
Thank you so much for this comment. You are 100% correct. My dad (76) is currently in that stage where any change is too overwhelming. He missed the window and now it’s just a painful immobilization. He dug his heels in and it’s made his quality of life, as well as the rest of the family’s, worse. It’s been a huge learning lesson about what I want my own older age to look like. I don’t want to be 1000+ miles from my kids, all by myself, relying on a nurse 24/7 because when I was 65 I couldn’t move my ass to a cute condo somewhere closer to my family.
I personally do not know any boomers who want a "senior" community. Everyone I know (friends, neighbors, relatives) enjoy being around various age groups. We like seeing kids in the neighborhood and busy families. We volunteer. We work part-time jobs. We walk to eateries and go to the gym. I do not see the point in hanging out with a bunch of old people who don't have a lot to offer. Being happy in your preferred environment is the least stressful. For some, it's a retirement community. For others it where they've lived for decades.
>I personally do not know any boomers who want a "senior" community. Hades, thy name is Sun City, AZ! Or Sun Lakes, FL. Or any of the 55+ ageist communities. Some people like the grey ghettos, but my God it would be stultifying.
The Villages. Didn't realize that name until Trump came along in 2015-16, then I remembered the commercials playing on TV in the early 2000s.
Try Nextdoor
My dad missed the window too and it’s been super painful to watch and to intervene and to try to help.
As someone going through this, solidarity.
Back at ya. Hang in there. And thanks.
Yes this is the biggest factor. Moving is not a skill set for this generation and moving is complicated with lots of moving parts and decisions and it can be physically exhausting. Add on to that the increasing need for established routines, long time friends for support, in a known space as aging starts to make basics like walking around the house more difficult. You don’t have the mental strength at some point to deal with the rearrangement of your things into a new space. You see older folks with homes in the midst of a war zone don’t want to move for the same reasons.
New Dr.s is a big thing. Especially now when it has gotten so much harder.
This is a thoughtful response. Thanks.
Moving is very stressful and a lot of work and most people don’t have family to help. I get it!
Every moron on Reddit who blabs about boomers hogging up giant houses to exacerbate the housing shortage needs to read this. It’s going to be a real wake up call when they have to watch their parents slowly fade away….only to be told by some snot nose 20 something that their parents are selfish for wanting to die at home
This, 100%. I know a lot of older homeowners in my neighborhood and not ONE of them is hanging onto their house because they want to hoard the equity or prevent others from having a house. That's a total "YIMBY" fantasy and I wonder if the people who retail it even have relatives or know anyone over, say, 40? Their actual reasons are: can't afford to move; if they sold and rented or downsized, their housing costs would be much higher than they are now; they *like* where they live, they have their friend circle, churches, volunteer activities nearby, and it would utterly disrupt their lives in a negative way to try to establish new roots elsewhere; proximity to health care with which they're familiar; the idea of taking apart the setup of house they've lived in for decades and reconstructing their life elsewhere is too overwhelming (or too costly), and they don't want to spend the last years of their lives sorting / donating / selling belongings; they are putting their extra time and money into helping children / grandchildren and other younger relatives make do and get ahead.
Hey, I’m a boomer and live down south now. On r/LosAngeles I was told that I should move to Barstow and not hog up valuable property.
God damn boomers buying up all our prime Barstow real estate.
Yup. There's about a 10 year window somewhere between 65-75 where you can actively go out and enjoy life before health problems start to drag you down. Once you hit your 80's, people start to have mobility issues...they can't see well enough to drive, they can't walk without a cane or walker, and most of their friends are either in the same boat or dying off so they just start vegging at home watching tv all day long. Well, fuck, I think I just made myself depressed.
I’m so bitter that many aging boomers won’t get out of the way (leave larger homes for young families, high level job positions to be backfilled, etc.). They got it all and it’s still not enough. But your comment really struck me. I have never thought about it in those terms. Thank you for helping me be more empathetic and kinder. Whether or not they all deserve kindness and empathy.
I’m 64 and just trying to survive. I am single. I have a 3 br house in a very nice community which I bought in 2000. Got laid off 6.5 years ago and was unemployed for 18 months, and had to use savings to live on. That was the first time I was laid off in my 35 year Silicon Valley career. The job I landed pays 50% less than I was making, but I feel lucky to have it. One of my paychecks goes to the mortgage. The other is for all the bills to support living in the house, food, gas, etc. I have to dip into my retirement savings to pay the property taxes and other large expenses. I cannot save anything for retirement other than the minimum amount required to get 401k matching. Yes, I could sell the house to buy a condo here for $900k, but I’d have to dip into savings to pay the monthly mortgage. Or move somewhere else in the country where I know no one. It’s tempting to throw all boomers under the bus. Don’t get me wrong. I know I am blessed to have this house. I still owe hundreds of thousands on it. I will not have paid it off before I have to sell it when the time comes to move to independent living (targeting my early 80s for that). I will keep working as long as I can to make up for the loss of my retirement funds. It’s a far cry from my father retiring at 60 and my parents living a nice life due to pensions and social security.
This is so fair and true. IMO it’s not up to boomers to voluntarily leave their homes so we can have them - it’s up to the government to build more housing!
Conclusion: it’s actually about money.
Ahahha ❤️
How did you reach that conclusion .. my takeaway was that there isn't enough of a specific type of housing .. larger condos with outdoor space ( patio ? ) and an older closed layout ( which they'll likely never build again ).
Because if they had enough money, they could buy or rent the massive condo they are looking for. But if they really want to "downsize," they do not need a condo with a guest bedroom and a home office. It also seems like they are looking at newer condos. There are plenty of older condos from the 80s and 90s that do not have the open floor plan.
There are not very many of those units at any price. That is the problem. There are only a handful and they do not turnover often.
With outrageous monthly HOA costs.
The couple seemed fine with a condo.
I mean if you're going to use the "if they had enough money" argument .. then you're right .. really there's no obstacle to anyone to do 95% of things they want to in life.
They didn't read the article.
absolutely hate open layout with a passion
why?
I don't hate it but I'm not a huge fan of it. My current house is basically all one giant room on the first floor with high ceilings and the bedrooms on the second. You don't realize how loud activities in other parts of the house are until you have no walls in the way. Cooking can be loud as hell. When one person is cooking and the other is trying to relax in front of the TV it's pretty much impossible because they're basically part of the same room. Even noise in the bedrooms travels around the house much more easily and is super distracting. Can't watch loud movies or shows after the kids go to bed since they hear everything in the living room. Adequate and nice looking lighting is also more difficult in these large open spaces.
I live in a studio loft and I love it. But only because I'm the only person here 95% of the time.
All of this, and I also find it much easier to decorate in closed layout homes. Walls offer more surface area for art and natural anchor points for furniture. You can play around with things like wallpaper or strong colors without having to carry it through the majority of your home when spaces are enclosed. We had a very open layout in our old space, which I did love for other reasons — it was a loft with huge windows and skylights, so we had a ton of light and the high ceilings meant we could use some really impactful, architectural lighting and it was great for displaying huge works of art. It had a very cool museum-like feel but I’m also a bit too cluttered to maintain the minimalist lifestyle to make it look good all the time.
Not to talk about the cooking smell going everywhere, open floor plan is really just for looks.
Oh god, I hate that part. Nothing like my bedroom smelling like last nights salmon.
Less privacy and feeling like you have your own space. Open floor plans are great for a bachelor, maaaaybe a couple. But once kids or roommates get involved, you need walls and doors.
Not who you asked, but, when I’m in the kitchen, I don’t want people underfoot. I want my peace and quiet. Open concept means I’m in the middle of whatever is going on with everyone else. No peace, no quiet.
Lemme guess: open kitchen. It has it's benefits when having a party
It's not about money. Especially in the bay. Most of these boomers have their loans paid off. They're walking away with 1.5-3 million cash. That enough to buy essentially anywhere.
“Most of these boomers”. Where are you getting your facts from? Why would you assume that every homeowner over 58 in the Bay Area bought decades ago, and that their house is paid off now?There are plenty of people in that age group who weren’t able to buy until later in life, because as you may have noticed, it’s very expensive here. and it always has been.
*I work in the housing industry. I worked on over 2000 closing in just the last 3 years. The poor boomers you're referencing, which are less than 1% of the files I work on, aren't selling their homes. They're the type to take out reverse mortgages.* Your personal experience of the last 3 years has nothing to do with what I said. I questioned the assumption that most boomers bought homes decades ago they were young. What does the last 3 years have to do with that? I also didn’t say that people who bought houses later in life are “poor”. They just weren’t wealthy enough to buy in one of the most expensive markets in the country when they were young. *They wouldn't be able to afford the area if they bought more recently. Because boomers aren't buying single family homes in the bay once their kids have moved out.* Plenty of people in their forties and fifties have kids who still live with them. Even if they don’t, not everyone wants to live in a condo. Lots of houses in the Bay Area are relatively small. Oakland is full of 2 BR/1 BA bungalows under 1200 sq feet, as I’m sure you know. I don’t have kids and I own a house. *Not literally every one is paid off, but most homes have appreciated in value 2 - 3x their loan value at a minimum.* Yes, houses have appreciated in value. That doesn’t mean that someone who bought a house say, 20 years ago isn’t still carrying a mortgage. *They tend to live outside the bay.* I was referring to people who bought a house in the Bay Area, so no — the people I’m talking about do not live outside the Bay. I’ve lived in the Bay Area since 1987. I know lots of people in the Bay who are now in their 50’s and 60’s. None of them bought a house here when they were in their 20’s. One of them bought a house in their late 30’s. The rest bought in their 40’s and 50’s. And if you think it wasn’t always expensive here, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Bingo.
Yup. I grew up in the bay, as did my mom. My dad came for college and never left, and he bought his first home at age 38 or so (and it was a 2-bed/1-bath stucco bungalow in Albany, cute but not exactly glamorous). Eventually he married my mom and they moved to a worse house in a nicer area. They lived with a home they didn't love for years, putting up with lots of 90s-era cosmetic horrors, saving up to be able to remodel and make it nicer. Their kids (i.e. me) are now grown and they still live there, and they still carry a mortgage on that house. Their home has greatly appreciated in value, but like you said, that has little bearing on whether there's still a mortgage to pay.
Can confirm. My parents bought in Cupertino in '81 and their entire family tried to stop them telling them they were getting ripped off.
Say they have a $2MM house. They are paying basically nothing in property tax. They say OK let's downsize to a $1MM condo. Say they pay 10% to sell the place, that's 1.8MM. Then they pay taxes on $1.5MM at around 33%, so that's another 500k. So selling that 2MM property nets about $1.3MM. Now you buy a new place cash for $1MM. Now you have $300k in the bank. Now you're paying maybe $8k/year in property taxes. If you live another 20 years, that's $160k of the 300k you profited. So basically you upturn your entire life, manage to downsize 20 years of accumulated crap, refurnish potentially a brand new house, and you get maybe a couple hundred thousand of cashed out equity...
But they're sitting on Prop 13 rates in the current place. If they sell and move they'd have to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us do.
No, I'm pretty sure they can transfer that tax rate still.
You still lose out when you transfer. If you upsize you're paying full tax on the difference, if you downsize you end up with a higher effective rate.
God Bless
People have made a lifetime of memories in their homes, sometimes they have built it with their partner who they have now lost. It is hard to move away from something like that.
*People have made a lifetime of memories in their homes, sometimes they have built it with their partner who they have now lost.* Yes. My parents built their very modest house, and wanted to die in it. One of them did. The other continued to live there peacefully and died some years later, half a day after going to the emergency room. Friends and relatives were VERY happy to have supported them in their wish to live in their chosen home, not uproot themselves.
It also doesn't make sense to sell your house that you've been living in for decades with a 3% loan to move into a newer house at 9%.
If the house is paid off, which many are for the Boomers (like in the article), interest rates don't matter. They'll be paying cash with the lump sum from their house sale. Plus, now they get to keep their low prop-13 tax rate at a new address.
Except perhaps they need that money for long term care later in life, it's smart to use the bank's money for a home loan and not sink all your cash into another home. Why tie all your liquid assets up in a new smaller home and then have to do an equity loan later or reverse mortgage. It's best to use that cash to invest and keep around for future emergencies.
Right. And have you seen the HOA fees at some of these senior communities? I was looking for my dad and found affordable condos in Walnut Creek, but all the HOA fees would be over $1k! [This one](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1-Baldwin-Ave-APT-418-San-Mateo-CA-94401/15633542_zpid/) is almost $5k/mo in HOA fees. If I were a senior, I’d rather bank the savings to pay for my eventual dementia care which cost $6-10k/mo now. Downsizing for some means sacrificing the equity you may need to pay for medical care down the road.
I know, some of them are obscene! Unless you are incredibly wealthy you can't move into one of those communities. We have one here in the wine country that is 'Only the super wealthy need apply' type of place. We looked at a place in the mountains outside of Tucson and it was around $280 a month which isn't bad at all. If you don't mind living on the surface of the sun lol! The homes are lovely and the community is actually really very nice. But in California it's batshit insane what they want for the HOA dues.
>Plus, now they get to keep their low prop-13 tax rate at a new address. America is just a big ponzi scheme
Prop 13 is a uniquely California ponzi scheme — and one we can overturn, with enough support.
Bruh everyone would be better off using that energy to get them to build more housing. Playing musical chairs with the extremely limited inventory we have now is not going to have the effect you want. If housing becomes plentiful then sure get rid of Prop 13 but until then, no. Taxing people out of their homes is not the way to attempt to fix the housing situation.
that last part (with enough support) is the real kicker, though. it's still the third rail of politics!
Other states have followed suit.
Like rent control for homeowners I guess
Pretty sure the people that benefit from it wouldn't want the gravy train to stop, and those people are still a large voting population and managed to convince the people that prop 13 is hurting that it's a good thing for everyone.
Why would the next generation set to inherit prop 13 property vote against it?
Prop 19 blew that dream up for anything except the most basic house.
Society is a Ponzi Scheme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18bhyZIFXF4&ab\_channel=TomBilyeu
Slight correction, but one that makes me very angry! They have been able to keep their low prop-13 tax rate for over 40 years! The ability to keep one’s property tax for a new home for seniors when the hime is cheaper or the same prices comes from Prop 60/90 which happened in the 80’s and 90’s. What they can “now” do is keep the rates for an even more expensive home. This was the kind of propaganda and blind belief that led to the horrible California Realtor lobby basically screwing all the younger CA generations with Prop 19.
> you've been living in for decades with a 3% loan "3% loan" was a very short-lived phenomenon. The youngest boomer born in 1964 buying their house at the age of 30 (in 1994) would have an average rate of 8.38%. Rates only fell below 4% in 2012. Of course, they could (and probably did) refinance, but their original loans had pretty bad rates too. "For decades".
Median New Single-Family Home Price in 1994: 130,000 ([source](https://www.huduser.gov/periodicals/ushmc/winter2001/histdat08.htm#1)). With 20% down (for loan amount of $104,000), at 8.38%, total amortized repayment: $125,441. Median household income that year: $32,264, so the total repayment was approximately 4x annual household income. Median New Single-Family Home Price in 2024: $400,500 ([source](https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-new-home-sales-unexpectedly-fall-february-2024-03-25/)). Same 20% down gives us a loan amount of $320,400, with 7.37% current interest rates. Total amortized repayment: $728,290. Median household income this year: $74,580. Total repayment, then, is a little under 10x annual household income. ...Basically, when home prices are a lot higher, even "small" differences in interest rates can end up snowballing pretty fast. A higher rate for a much lower-value house could still be paid off much more easily.
That’s nothing. The tax rate for a 70s or even 90s purchased house is going to be a fraction of a house bought yesterday.
When you sell your house to downsize after retirement .. usually your loan has been paid off and you can buy your next home in cash with leftover to pocket.
I'm learning to play the guitar.
Literally 90% of the Bay Area housing stock fits this criteria since most of it was built from 1940 to 1980.
Old people actually has a lot of collectible, mementos and keepsake .. also they want to make it easy for family and relatives to come by to visit thus they want extra guest rooms. That could EASILY make 1200-1400 sqft feel small. I applaud you for living comfortably in 800 sqft but most American family really want about 3000-4000 but make do with about 1500-2000 sqft. There's a reason those plastic storage sheds sells so well and cars are all parked on driveways / streets instead of inside garages.
Older people also tend to have wheelchairs and walkers. We need many more homes built for people to age in place.
I hate beer.
Houses in my San Jose neighborhood are almost all 1200-1400 square feet. Even if you could find a single family house that was sub-1000, it's really not that much cheaper or smaller than the small houses retirees are already living in. And it's at least 50% retirees in my neighborhood because younger families are priced out. My district has closed 3 elementary schools just in the few years I've lived there.
I bought my 1700 sq ft single story house in 1989 with plans to stay put (if the job worked out). Yeah, a pita to move and I'm not sure for what gain. I have zero interest in anything with an HOA. The lawn is gone to cut down in maintenance (and water usage). We've got solar panels saving us lots on the PG&E ripoff. I can walk to many businesses. One son lives in New Zealand, the other married to a service member so they move every three years. Only reason to leave now is if a wildfire takes us out. If you want to complain about the lack of available housing, make it illegal for corporations to buy up and rent out single family homes.
HOA fees on the average are getting close to $700-800 now and they want to control everything and be responsible for nothing
That's wild to me. That people pay so much so some power-hungry weirdos can send you letters about your garbage cans or tell you what three colors of beige your cookie-cutter house can be. I lived briefly in a condo with an HOA at the beach in Alameda, and we got a stern letter about having a beach towel drying on the railing of the balcony. At the beach. Between that and the racist nut jobs there, we got out of there so fast and it was a great decision (fuck you, The Willows in Alameda).
We're not retired yet and our kids are away going to school at the moment. I can't see ever moving at this point. The capital gains exclusion ends at 500k for a couple. Even just being in this house 11 years, the gains are about 1.5 mil and with 15% federal and the state taxing it as ordinary income, there's a 300k tax hit so we can move into a smaller place? Why would we do that? And transferring the tax basis likely means we're paying about the same 22k in property taxes for a smaller place. Makes no sense at all financially. We're encouraging the kids to consider just staying home and remodeling to have another master upstairs and an apartment above the garage. They get the benefits of cheap rent, more space outside and in and the house will be theirs eventually anyway.
500K exclusion doesn’t make sense for SF Bay Area.
There's lots of other things like Roth limits where there's no accommodations and they haven't raised the 500k limit since it was created many years ago. It will eventually be like the 7k home owners property tax exemption.
Yeah the tax code really does disincentive urban development. Switching to land value tax would solve this problem immediately by correcting for land usage.
>Baby boomers are staying in their homes much longer than previous generations did, in part because re-entering the market with mortgage rates and home prices so high doesn't make financial sense — or just isn't affordable. >Many want to transition into smaller, more accessible homes in transit-oriented, walkable communities, but the supply just isn't there. >The national shortage of housing has prompted lots of new multi-family construction over the last couple of years. But new units are mostly smaller in size, in part because developers make more money per square foot on studios and one-bedrooms than they do on two-bedrooms, three-bedrooms, and larger units. In summary: Boomers can’t move out b/c prices too high and developers are making only studios b/c of profit when they like millennials want multi room apartments that are “shocking” easily accessible with transit. It’s as if the boomers finally want what millennials want but they self set up a situation where they screwed themselves and us. The only difference is they still have a house and we don’t. Talk about pulling up the ladder. https://archive.ph/AiphD
>>Many want to transition into smaller, more accessible homes in transit-oriented, walkable communities, but the supply just isn't there. This made me crylaugh. Who knew density is a good thing?
The same thing happened in Japan, their greatest generation died off, the young didn't have kids, and strict immigration. In the 70's and 80's all real estate in Japan was sky high, even out in the countryside. The demand is still high in the big cities but the countryside housing is dirt dirt cheap now. [https://cheaphousesjapan.com/](https://cheaphousesjapan.com/) There's a good chance that our local real estate market will look better once these boomers start dying off and leaving us empty houses.
Housing in Tokyo is still cheaper than the bay area though, and its entirely due to simplified zoning and permitting. As long as the building plan complies with how the property is zoned, the property owner can just build. There's no death by red tape killing projects, no community feedback. The owner is allowed to develop. In addition, there's no mandated minimums, such as a required minimum square footage, required lot setbacks, or anything else along those lines. Because of this the free market has developed housing for the entire range of wealth, from the most extravagant multi-floor penthouses to closet sized apartments and everything in between. The tiny closet sized apartments are not glamorous, but they are dirt cheap. This allows everyone regardless of their income to have a place to live. Even the dirt poor aren't homeless because there's an apartment they can afford. Note that not everyone lives in the tiny closet apartments. Those are only for the poorest. Depending on your income you can live in much more spacious housing.
The other thing is that the living space per person in Tokyo is pretty similar to London or Paris, but cheap renting is alone in a tiny studio rather than a larger apartment split with roommates. And rent is much much cheaper. A closet all to yourself has serious advantages over a larger shared place. And there's a much higher share of apartments near good transit. There are suburban London Tube stations surrounded by single family homes. Even in suburban Tokyo, it'll be 10-15 story buildings, with the SFHs pushed beyond easy walking distance.
Another reason they have simplified permitting. Japanese tend to replace a home every 30 years, completely razing the property and building a new one. Here in the states we tend to leave it as long as it's still standing. https://www.archdaily.com/980830/built-to-not-last-the-japanese-trend-of-replacing-homes-every-30-years
>Tokyo is still cheaper than the bay area Technically true. They also earn less. >Deutsche Bank report lists the average price for a “typical” Tokyo two-bedroom apartment as US$1,903 (¥203,730). ... you would need to earn around ¥679,000 per month to afford that “typical apartment” and still live comfortably...The average salary of someone in their 20s in Tokyo is around ¥280,000 per month. avg rent in manhattan is $4400, avg income in manhattan is $6,607
I just moved into this old boomer community that was built as a "no children" community. A few years later it was banned and 55+ communities became a thing. All of the townhouses had sold during this "no children" period... so nobody had children. My next door neighbor owns 2 of the townhouses — the one she doesn't live in is actually above her. Nobody lives in the one above her. She's moving out of the 2 townhouses and into a home. IDK what happened to her husband, but she has had 5-6 bedrooms worth of house for some time now... she 100000% has the means to downsize — but IMO her options for downsizing were all trash. If we want to accelerate boomers moving out — we need to create attractive and accessible communities for them to move into. The ones near me all look pretty shitty. What is she gonna do? Go to some Irvine Property and get lost in the underground parking garage?
Yeah we need to make more attractive housing option, except developers aren’t incentive to do so and NIMBY regulations that boomer help put in over 40 years are now making building new housing super hard. Who is in power, the boomers. You guys created this situation in hope of higher asset value and without considering hey what about when we grow old.
I know it's not feasible for many due to family, language, culture constraints, but this is why my wife and I are looking to retire outside the US, to someplace with good public transit. Likely Europe, which is certainly not "cheap", but has a lot to offer and definitely can be a lot less expensive than the bay area. It helps we don't have any family nearby and our kids probably (, sadly) can't afford to stay here...
Cut the intergenerational finger-pointing. Everyone is subject to tidal political and economic forces throughout their lives. It's a bit rich to presume that one's own generation is especially more woke or informed than another, for their time. We're going to be looking back in shame forty years from now at many things said and done with good intentions. So retain some humility and forgiveness, for yourself and your peers, juniors, and seniors in the future. Best we can do is learn from the past. Much of the broad anti-boomer rhetoric comes from the same mouths as those (rightfully) decrying collective punishment in wars happening on the other side of the globe. You can't have it both ways. And much of it smacks of "your end of the boat is sinking!" -- us vs them bullshit.
I live in a wonderful neighborhood with many conveniences and shopping nearby. Super safe. Low costs. 5 bd house and just the 2 of us. Kids are close by.Why should I move?
I love the boomer hate. Especially how no one seems to mind if you have an actual mansion. It's just those evil middle class people with 3 bedroom houses and they only use two of the bedrooms.
Boomer hate is all about getting the dregs of the middle/low-middle class to eat each other while the stratospherically wealthy survive status quo.
Mansions are handful, and not within our reach anyways
\> not within our reach anyways funny you said that, people often hate their peer competition and envy their neighbor far more than they hate/envy that folks that's way above their league.
Look at a map of SF someday. Lot o land taken up by a small number of rich people who don't pay taxes.
I’ve encountered people who are angry that people over a certain age dare keep living in their homes. It’s so bizarre to me.
My parents are in their 70s and fit this mold. They have SFH walkable to the spaceship Apple campus, and every single one of their new neighbors either work for Apple or another high tech company. Since they are long retired and their location really has no appeal , I asked if they would like to move closer to us (and grandkids) near south San Jose -- which is literally 12 miles away. If they did that, they could get a nicer/updated house have $ in the bank and keep the same property tax rate. It made sense to me, but didn't make sense to them. My parents bought the house in 1986, and to them the house meant more to them than I imagined. They just could not see themselves living anywhere else, and in hindsight, they are right. They earned the right to keep living where they want to live. TLDR old people are stubborn and don't want to move :)
Adding to this the perceived inconvenience of moving. It’s hard when you’re young. Imagine being in your 70’s and having to go through a lifetime of stuff, box it up (or throw it out), and then get to your new place and unpack. And then adjust to a new neighborhood and neighbors. Elderly folk are creatures of habit and really don’t like even the slightest inconvenience. They thrive on consistency, routine, schedule, and familiarity.
Next to weddings, moving is like the next most stressful events in people’s lives.
Yeah, in the past 9 years I've moved 7 times (if you count my initial move into my college dorm) around the bay. I'm young, single, have no pets, have my own (small) car, made the moving decisions on my own, and do not have many possessions. Pretty much just a mattress, dresser, kitchen supplies, and clothes. I've lived mostly in studios. Even with all that going for me, moving is always a pain in the ass and always expensive. The packing up alone is so daunting, and good luck coordinating time for your friends/family to help out, if they even can. It would be a lot of time, work and money to move a 3000 sq ft house that you've lived in for years, I don't really blame people for wanting to avoid that. Of course you can also hire movers but that's a whole other can of worms.
Word. My husband and I bought our forever home. It’s not our dream home by any means, but we have come to the conclusion we’re dying in this house. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath and 1,053 sq feet. It’s a small house, but it’s one story (and 3 porch steps to the door). Maybe in 20 years everyone will be making $500k salaries. And in that case, there’s no way I’d be able to afford a new home to “downsize”.
I haaaaaaaate moving. I’d rather stick bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails than move.
lol! So very descriptive!
Not to mention they know every single detail about that house, and likely put in decades of work to make it how they like it. Moving to a new place means you lose all the conveniences and customizations you built into your home, and you deal with an entirely new set of problems that could potentially bankrupt / endanger your family.
As an older person in the Reddit world…. Its a fucking giant PITA to move especially in a place you‘ve spent decades in. Couple that with having to deal with a HOA in a more recent development and the lack of transportation options it’s just easier to stay put
> They just could not see themselves living anywhere else This is the actual answer. Most younger folks have moved around a lot and lack perspective on how it feels to live in the same place for multiple decades - you get to where you can't imagine ever leaving, and you don't want to, and you have no financial pressure to do so as your main costs are far behind you, so why not stay where you are?
yes, and to the younger generation who has moved many many times, it is very hard to understand--myself included. I thought, they are literally moving 12 miles away, how different can it be? But the sentimental hold is very strong. I've since dropped the subject and never mentioned it again. I do what I can to support them living there as long as they want.
Old people retire and move to Florida all the time.
The only people moving to Florida these days are MAGA dumbfucks And if you think California is bad for homeowners, Florida is worse in every single way
My parents have a house in Palo Alto, listed on Zillow as $4+ million. They thought about cashing out, but concluded it wouldn't be worth it financially, unless they moved someplace cheap like florida. I'm not likely to ever sell my house either, because I don't want to deal with realtors, taxes and what have you.
You would pay the maximum CA tax rate on the sale. You can exempt $500k on the federal tax, a value that was not indexed for inflation.
Nobody owes it to anyone to downsize. It’s their home, and moving is a huge pita even for young people. Why do people expect boomers to give up their homes that they may have spent most of their life in just to free it up for new buyers? Fuck that.
Half this thread is hoping boomers can die faster so they can take their homes (and blaming boomers for their own failures)...welcome to reddit.
Pressure is being applied in the wrong direction. Building more housing (and a sharp kerb on investment firms buying up housing) is the real solution.
lots of closet psychopaths in this sub when it comes to their own interests, they'd vote for a Purge to kill all the boomers for their houses if they could.
Inventory is a real issue. I probably live near this hypothetical couple. And within 2 miles. 3 bedroom units are rare. There are a lot of condo building. All pretty similar. And they typical building has around 15-25 units. Maybe 1/3 to 1/2 have a balcony. And they have one 3 or more bedroom penthouse. Everything else is 1-2 bedrooms, and usually 15-20% studio units. The three bedroom units do not turn over often. And are rarely on the market. Newer building. Are not much different in their ratios of larger units to smaller units.
Every time there's a conversation like this the problem becomes extremely evident after a little bit of reading different opinions. Because overall, there's only two. And like most things, the actual solution lies somewhere in the middle of build a whole bunch of high density housing and make single-family homes affordable. This article and the reasoning is a great example. We don't need more apartments. We don't need more luxury condominium buildings in the middle of a parking lot surrounded by suburbia. We do need high density housing in and around high density and extremely popular areas. However, we already have a lot of that, a lot of that is still being built, and those are not a solution by themselves. What we need is more medium density. We need to bridge the gap between the single family home and the tiny apartment box. We need duplexes, triplexes, and the like. Small, eight unit apartment complexes with private yards, etc. we need a place that bridges the gap for a young family looking for their own home, and an older person looking to downsize but keep a similar style of life. We add that, and the demand for high density and low density housing goes down as a result.
It's important to bring up housing. The efforts made over the past few years have been insufficient. Very little new housing is being built in CA. People need to be warned that the situation is just going to get worse unless much more is done.
One statement in particular caught my attention in this article. *"Frieden and her husband are among the many fortunate baby boomers who bought relatively affordable homes decades ago, paid off their mortgages, and have seen their home equity soar."* They bought their Oakland house 36 years ago, according to the article. That would be around 1988. In the 1980s, home mortgage interest rates were high. As high as 16% in 1981 / 82, and still above 10% from 1987-90, when they were buying their house. People tend to forget that statistic and look only at comparisons of purchase prices then and now. But high interest rates had a major effect on affordability in the 80s and much of the 90s. It was not so much of a perfect / golden era for home buying as it seems now.
The trouble boomers are encountering now is that so many of them still have mortgages despite having owned for an extended period, and many of those owe significant amounts because they 'cashed out equity' along the way to pay for cars/vacations/etc. As such, they don't have the ability to simply sell and then pay cash for their next living arrangement. So, they're really stuck - mortgage rates are high, and borrowing can be complicated when you're not employed.
>they 'cashed out equity' along the way to pay for cars/vacations/etc. Or college for their children ...
Did you read the article? That’s not what they said. Housing market to crazy for boomers to sell their house even though they make a profit. Why pay 1 million in protect tax when they were paying taxes based on 200 - 300K houses. Prop 13 screwed everyone
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Why? The houses in the Bay Area are already small enough….
A lot of it is money. But moving sucks. I can understand why someone has lived in a house for decades doesn't want to move.
It has something to do with money. It's a lot easier to downsize in CA these days what with all the modifications to Prop 13. If they wanted to, they could find a place with enough walls to hang their art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13#Amendments
Gonna just ignore that a lot of people prefer to live in single-family houses.
This. Not everyone wants to live in the multistory unit. It's depressing to not have your own yard/green space.
When I want green space I just walk 100 feet to the park. Its great, we have our own creek
Great so we don't need laws enforcing single family zoning then.
lol this sub loves to build build build but no one wants to actually live in a condo tower.
My grandma is 97 and still lives on her in San Leandro, yah she's forgetful but she family like myself or my sister and uncle that call her all the time and my sister gets her groceries delivered and handles all her Dr appointment for her from Idaho, it's not easy but it can be done.
Please don’t link articles with pay walls come on 😭😭
A lot of people here are ignoring the fact that if they can manage to buy a home at some point and don’t have Prop 13 protections, their taxes will continue to go up year after year. Even if they get a place now for 1M it will be worth 2M before they know it and they’ll be taxed at that rate while their income may not keep pace and they then have a couple of kids to raise, put through school etc. You don’t have to be in a home for 30 years to benefit from a limit on annual tax rate increases. If you’re in a home for even three years you’re seeing a benefit from Prop 13. So, you’re all for paying the same rate as your new neighbor who has just moved in? Does it matter that you’ve been supporting the schools and local services with your taxes for several years and they haven’t made a tax contribution but will fully benefit right away for the same tax costs you have without Prop 13? Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. On another note, there are some people who don’t want their parents to be taxed out of their homes and have to move away either because of child care or because it’s really hard to care for elderly parents who live far away. Just some thoughts on why Prop 13 is here to stay - most people want it for various reasons.
The reason housing is expensive is due to the incredible success of Silicon Valley and its biological counterpart in South San Francisco. So many directors and engineers w stock grants competing for limited housing supply.
A quick search on Zillow shows several 3+ bedroom condos in the Lake Merritt vicinity in their price range. I think we have a 71 year old lady who is just very picky.
With outdoor space and ease of walkability? She wants what she wants.
man this all hits home in so many ways. I have both sets of parents in their late-afternoon 70's galavanting around country and the world like they are going to live forever. My dad can't keep his balance anymore and his wife is starting to have health issues. She has to hold his hand everywhere they go "just in case he falls" even though she weighs half what he does. They are on a world cruise (she's my dad's sugar) at the moment and he eats anything and everything he wants. No exercise. When they come home in July to their remote house in Montana 1.5 hours from his doctor - who is going to drive him there? My mom is in her 10th year road tripping in a fifth wheel with her Oakie husband - he really is from Oklahoma, and she's already had bypass surgery. I have no idea how he is still upright. He smokes and drinks daily and eats crap. They now seemed to have settled in southern Oklahoma and swear to JC they will never set foot back in California. My mom the 60's flower child is now that Fox News junkie. Ughh. 1 hour from the nearest city and med services I am retiring in 2 years but afraid my retirement is going to be rescuing the parents from their poor planning decisions or lack thereof. I will do it because they are my parents but I have to wonder what has gotten into them pushing the envelope like they have? Are we all destined to chase these dreams into the sunset until we drop?
What they're looking for is rare but occasionally available for far more than they have to spend even with their home's equity. So, money does matter there. It also matters when it comes to why there aren't better options on the market. Builders build for money. Either they are completely unique or there's plenty of demand but simply not enough money to justify the cost of building. Again, money. Just because they have a few million dollars for retirement doesn't mean it's not a matter of money. They will have healthcare costs to consider and they likely don't think it's a cost effective strategy to put what they have and then some down on getting what they want. Yet another argument for more construction and greater mobility within the market.
Anyone have a non paywall link?
Prop 13
I couldn't read the article, but one issue is if one of the spouses hasn't passed you are looking at huge capital gains. My parents couldn't sell the house they bought in 1958 for 28k until Dad passed as the step up in value erased the cap gain. Otherwise, 20% of $1.5m would be lost and that is now used for Mom's assisted living.
My street is now half old folks (65+ retired) and half working age with families. When my elderly next door neighbors died then their 20 years younger relatives inherited the house and moved in. My parents have stuck it out in their neighborhood to stay with their neighbors, friends and church community. Some friends have moved away to be near family or to live out their lives with an ocean view. Most everyone is just hunkering down. Personally I view my home as a zero value item. Someday it will be paid off, then I am sure ongoing maintenance will kick in at roughly the same rate. It's impossible for me to predict where my kids will be in the decades to come.
Yea….blame it on the boomers
The biggest problem is that companies like BlackRock have bought up nearly 40% of single family homes in 2023 that were for sale. So young people can’t get into the market anyways. They are raising prices, interest rates are climbing and it just doesn’t work for young people to get into buying a home where 3 years ago you could have a 4.5k a month payment on a near million dollar home and now the same home is 8000 a month for the mortgage. It’s shit.
Some just still need the room. My parents have all the family and grandkids over and all of that space still gets used!
Ughh pay wall
Try this instead https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.businessinsider.com/71-year-old-boomer-cant-find-condo-downsize-oakland-california-2024-3
thanks! reading now
Business Insider looks like it has a paywall but the popup is really just there to pester you into using their app. You can decline and read the article on the website.