Which Areas Will Be Flooded with Homes Once Boomers Start Leaving Them?

https://www.zillow.com/research/silver-tsunami-inventory-boomers-24933/

by SQL2219 • 7 years ago

104 55 7 years ago

zillow.com

cletus2• 7 years ago

Florida is likely in for a double-whammy with climate change compounding with the Silver Tsunami.

I wouldn't want to own property in Florida in the long term.

hprotagonist• 7 years ago

or the short term, if i’m honest.

Analemma_2• 7 years ago

I keep saying that once rise to the point where the problem is undeniable, Floridians will demand— and probably get— a colossal bailout on the taxpayers’ dime for their property, either in the form of some megaengineering project to hold back the ocean or just forcing the government to buy their homes, because Florida is a swing state with a large number of crucial electoral votes and neither major party can blow them off.

ohazi2• 7 years ago

It's literally not possible to hold back the ocean in Florida. The bedrock is porous.

crisdux• 7 years ago

They basically already get that. All coastal communities and flood prone areas do. In the form of the National Flood Insurance Program. NFIP is massively subsidized flood insurance and does not charge nearly enough to cover the costs of liabilities. We've basically been rebuilding structures with taxpayer funding in flood prone areas ever since the NFIP started. Climate change has nothing to do with this bad policy.

Spooky232• 7 years ago

The sunbelt is a weird place as there are a lot of businesses there now, but many areas are dependent on tourism and retirement real estate.

I don’t know a lot about Florida, but I usually go to Hilton Head, SC every couple of years. The last trips there have been noticeable issues reported and evident about the lack of workers — you have bazillions of old people from somewhere else, but anyone who is working there cannot afford it.

AnthonyMouse2• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to put some work into changing that. For example, national popular vote is basically a dead letter because you'd need support from states whose majority party benefits from the status quo (e.g. Texas), which you thereby can't get.

But suppose you throw them a bone and give them something like national popular vote weighted by electoral college delegates. Now you can get them on board because the change doesn't result in electoral math less favorable to their preferred political party, but it still removes swing states like Florida from their privileged position, to the benefit of the people of Texas, California and everywhere else who suddenly need to be paid attention to by both parties again.

phlakaton• 7 years ago

I was going to say, a title just as apt would be: "Which Areas Will Be Flooded Once Boomers Start Leaving Them?"

perspective1• 7 years ago

LOL. The article completely ignores that today's 40-somethings will be 60-something 20 years from now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...

edit: Seeing the flood of downvotes I'll give some data. Home ownership increases with age. 60+ers leaving their homes from death, poor health or inconvenience will be supplemented by today's 40+ers over the next 20 years. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership... . We were in the same situation 20 years ago, 21 years ago, 22 years ago, and so on.

boomboomsubban• 7 years ago

Does that somehow change how many current 60 year olds will be moving out of their house in the next twenty years? A demographic change isn't what's being discussed.

flyGuyOnTheSly2• 7 years ago

40 somethings are not baby boomers... boomers are in their late 50s to early 70s right now. [0]

The baby boom happened after world war II ended in 1945 which was 74 years ago.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

drivingmenuts• 7 years ago

40-somethings are Gen-Xers. We've been raised on the idea of an unstoppable grim-meathook future. We don't want that, but we're powerless to stop it.

gleenn• 7 years ago

The point is that there is a surge of baby-boomers who will die and the number of people younger than them are a significantly smaller group, so there will in fact be a surge in available housing.

s1artibartfast4• 7 years ago

I thought so as well, but it simply isn't true. Total number of folks in their 60s will continue to grow.

Today, there are ~77 million Americans over 60. In 2040, there will be ~100 million Americans over 60.

You can play with the numbers here. https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

madengr• 7 years ago

There are as many millennials as boomers, whereas gen X is about 10 million less than either group.

I’d like to know what they are going to do with all the old-folks homes that are going up.

Spooky232• 7 years ago

It’s very different. I’m fortunate to be in a good place from a retirement perspective, but at this point my parents had made a 10x return on their home that they purchased in late 70s NYC, plus a legacy pension, plus a retirement healthcare.

Most of the housing wealth will be eaten up by health costs. With families moving away and people retiring to alternate locales, property wealth will be seized and sold off by the county to pay for Medicaid.

Many of the folks in our field are doing great, but tech is boom/bust and people are making way too much money now.

tuesdayrain• 7 years ago

A 10x return on something bought in the 70s is very poor in comparison to the stock market which will double your money roughly every 7-10 years.

matheweis• 7 years ago

Most of the housing wealth will be eaten up by health costs

Unless the home is somehow stripped down or otherwise damaged, the intrinsic value of the housing wealth will not change; it just is owned by a different entity.

s1artibartfast4• 7 years ago

I was skeptical at first, but you are right

Today, there are ~77 million Americans over 60. In 2040, there will be ~100 million Americans over 60.

qqqwerty• 7 years ago

The issue is not in 2040, it's between now and 2040. For example, the current population in the 40-45 age range is nearly 2 million less than the 55-59 range. So sometime between now and 2040 (probably around 2030) we are going to see a decrease in the number of newly retired individuals. By 2040, the first wave of millennials will start retiring, which should make the 'silver tsunami' less of an issue.

zacharycohn• 7 years ago

But people who are 40 now have different priorities and tend to want to live in different places than 60 year olds did 20 years ago.

tapatio2• 7 years ago

Nope. Everyone still wants to live in coastal Southern California.

filesystemdude• 7 years ago

The point is the flood of the market with these folks' homes.

If there's demand because of a new set of people come by them, that doesn't negate a rise in available properties from which they may select.

Real estate companies make money from the _churn_ of the market, not whether there are too many or too few houses to meet demand.

imtringued• 7 years ago

Why do demographics matter? It's completely missing the point. The only thing that matters is that the population is still growing and therefore there will be no housing shortage.

smileysteve• 7 years ago

The us birth rate is at a 32 year low, less than 2 for nearly a decade.

Combining with an increasing middle age mortality rate via suicide, opiods, and obesity (including diabetes)

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723518379/u-s-births-fell-to-...

carrozo• 7 years ago

It seems likely that, in the coming two decades, the construction industry will need to place a greater focus on updating existing properties, in addition to simply building new homes.

Remodelling existing stock seems like an enormous opportunity for construction tech.

bcrosby95• 7 years ago

Remodeling is already fairly prevalent in the US, especially in popular, expensive places where it's difficult to get new housing approved. Most people I know that bought a house also did a remodel that costed them $100k-$300k before moving in. I'm somewhat surprised more construction companies haven't gotten into it.

to11mtm• 7 years ago

There's a company in my area that is focused on this and to your point they are doing great for themselves.

smhinsey• 7 years ago

The elephant in the room here is that the lifespan of a lot of recently built houses is not necessarily what we might expect. A lot of these houses will turn out to have problems that will effectively “total” them as they age. There are a lot of McMansions out there that simply have no real long term future.

kevinyun• 7 years ago

Could you expand on some of these points? For example, has there been new construction material of which the long-term effects are unknown, or has there been new architectural design methods?

Or were you saying that as a blanketed statement of opinion

chmaynard2• 7 years ago

Corporate-sponsored research is always suspect. Why is this an important research topic? Is the study notable or significant compared to other studies in this field? Just asking.

Aeolun• 7 years ago

Is this actual research? Or is it just Zillow extrapolating from data they already have to drive traffic?

topkai22• 7 years ago

It’s mostly based on census data. It looks pretty solid, I’ve run numbers like this before (although I was looking families with children to live near, but old people.)

chmaynard2• 7 years ago

Well, the URL contains the word "research", so I assume Zillow considers this to be a research report.

"I don’t think industry really does very much research. They come up with an idea and they try to sell it. If it was a good idea, maybe they will make money. Even if it was a bad idea, if they have good marketing people, they might still make money and we never know..."

Héctor Garcia-Molina, 1953–2019

itronitron• 7 years ago

I expect this will hit every city differently as a lot depends on what the younger generations can afford relative to what the median price of boomer housing is in the area.

ggm• 7 years ago

An example of "worth" (as in net worth) which has potential to simply evaporate. Individually disastrous for families assuming intergenerational wealth was safe in the parents house, fiscally disastrous because the economy will be in shrinkage as it was in the sub prime, because of excess housing stocks causing a decline in construction spend, and declining values forcing more people into drawdown on capital, or a retreat from spending. Under employment hits. Deflation isn't fun.

nine_zeros• 7 years ago

A lot of this also appears to be visible in the northeast. Entire towns greying so rapidly that it's hard to find any services at all already. I wonder what will happen with so many houses being dumped on the market.

lotsofpulp• 7 years ago

Same thing that happens to any dying town. Decrease in property values and decrease in quality of life.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1• 7 years ago

A substantial portion of retiree houses will come onto the market as elderly move into care homes, sometimes several years before they pass away. The price houses sell for depends on who will be buying _ either other retirees or local employed people, who may enjoy opportunities to upgrade. As usual housing prices depend on either local incomes or outside cash.

Which Areas Will Be Flooded with Homes Once Boomers Start Leaving Them?

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