Many baby boomers poured millions into these spacious homes, planning to live out their golden years in houses with all the bells and whistles.
Now, many boomers are discovering that these large, high-maintenance houses no longer fit their needs as they grow older, but younger people aren’t buying them.
— wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal reports that wealthy baby boomers in America's far-flung retirement suburbs are having trouble selling their McMansions. The problem? The homes are too big, too expensive, and too far away from everything else.
Another issue: Too many multi-million dollar homes are hitting the market all at once. As the TV generation begins to age out of homeownership and sky-high student debt keeps city-loving millennials locked out of the housing market, giant suburban homes are sitting for longer than in previous years. As a result, owners are increasingly accepting below-asking price offers.
The problem, the report warns, could get worse in the coming decade as demographic transformations reshape America and some 32 million baby-boomer-owned homes go for sale.
Rick Palacios, Jr. of John Burns Real Estate Consulting told The Wall Street Journal, “You had this wave of homes built that now just don’t make sense for a lot of the people who bought them."
Maybe it's time to subdivide?
7 Comments
I'll just leave this here.
Maybe they aren't actually worth what they think they are. All of that wasted space, inefficiency, etc. In a way the market (and younger people) is right and they all got scammed buying oversized cheap junk. If the prices drop, some may buy.
Compare that with more human-scale, 1950s-70s suburbs that more closely match their assumed price. Better design = more $$ in the long run. McMansions are a huge scam.
I remember how my entire childhood into adulthood the farms around my town were all being sold, subdivided, and dug up, with pig-tail cul-de-sacs and lick-n-stick stone and vinyl being the mashed ass du jour. What started as a very pleasant rural environment with old farmsteads ended up strip mall hell backed up against McMansions. Ugh.
Many thought it would be fun and easy to build their custom home. Watched too many of those building porno shows. Plus, how could they lose with prices going up and up? And Uncle Sam was giving the tax break on the mortgage interest. Ruined vast amounts of pristine rural acerage, never to be returned to its natural state.
What good was all that rural acreage doing? Nobody was making any money on it.
Them's some fucked up priorities, friend.
Exactly, which is why things are the way they are. And we are active participants in creating this shitty built environment. Irony alert.
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