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by acdha 1690 days ago
> even if the value goes up, they need a place to live in, and the high prices are pretty much everywhere, people actually want to live. The only ones profiting from baby boomers are their kids when they inherit the houses.

This leaves out one major factor: they need somewhere to live but that doesn't mean it needs to be the same real-estate market or size. Someone who sells a house large enough to have a family in a major market and retires to a cheaper market can see a very comfortable return. Probably nowhere near enough to make up for the other impacts of the policies people voted for to drive up their home value but it's harder to get people to give equal weight to different factors when one of them will show up directly in their personal bank account.
1 comments
ajsnigrutin 1690 days ago
This would be true, if someone old sold a house in san francisco and bought a house in bumfuck alabama...

But considering that people tend to move to a few urban locations, the house prices in eg. florida got very expensive too... yes, they earn a bit more, but I don't believe that single house owners, moving from SF to FL (or wherever) are causing the housing crisis.

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acdha 1690 days ago
It's also true if you sell a house in San Francisco and move to South Florida, or North Carolina, or all of the other places millions of people do exactly what I described. Retirees don't need massive houses, to minimize commutes to downtown, or being in the best school district, which opens up many options which other people might pass up. If your goal is “on the beach in South Beach”, yes, it'll cost a fortune but if your goal is “near the beach, any beach” you have plenty of options for well under $100k.

I don't disagree that this isn't driving the housing crisis — my point was simply that it's not like many older people aren't strongly in favor of the housing market staying high until they can cash out, because for many people their home equity is the largest component of their retirement plan and they aren't interested in continuing to need to deal with the maintenance required by a single-family house.

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