This plight is a contributor to the tight inventory – kids will be more likely to occupy their parents’ home, rather than selling it. Hat tip to WC for this boomer article in the latimes.com – an excerpt:
Debbie Rohr lives with her husband and twin teenage sons in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas.
The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rose bushes. It’s a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life.
She just never imagined that it would be her childhood home, a return to a bedroom where she once hung posters of Olivia Newton-John and curled up with her beloved Mrs. Beasley doll.
Driven by economic necessity — Rohr has been chronically unemployed and her husband lost his job last year — she moved her family back home with her 77-year-old mother.
At a time when the still sluggish economy has sent a flood of jobless young adults back home, older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-adults-in-parents-home-20140421,0,2293806.story#ixzz2zd2YL6Nk
Funny thing is that in China they are complaining that the children move away from the parents’ home and buy their own home in the city.
But seriously this is the way 90% of the world lives anyway (multi-generations in same home).
In the end, will it be a historical anomaly that the boomers bought several homes?
I think it will. At a minimum, the number of times people move up will dwindle.
SD County detached-home sales:
1Q04: 5,906 @ $304/sf
1Q14: 4,539 @ $312/sf
The pricing isn’t excruciating, it is the number of sales (-23%).
The county’s population has gone up about 10% in the last ten years, and mortgage rates are much lower. People may not be able to afford the neighborhood they could 2-4 years ago, but they can still get something.
But with so few choices (low inventory), you really have to work for it. In an era where you can buy virtually anything else with a couple of clicks, people aren’t used to working this hard and long to find what they want.
Eventually, taking over the parents’ home doesn’t look so bad, and it will keep the low-inventory cycle continuing.
P.S. The realtor population needs to drop by at least 50%. There isn’t enough work for everyone.
What no ladder!!
I think the Ladder will come back in style when the economy (and inflation) get going again IMO anyway.
When the New homes start going up in numbers again the game will be on.
Just about 1 Realtor per 100 people in the state of CA. Of course with a fairly low barrier of entry and fairly low annual dues I don’t know if the number of licensed realtors go down but certainly those that are making it their primary profession does.
http://www.dre.ca.gov/Stats/2013-2014.html