[hakfoo]

I think the traditional narrative was that when you were ready to retire, you'd dramatically downscale your housing. Any children you raised were (presumably) moved out, and you no longer had to consider a commute, so you could sell the four-bedroom family house in an older, closer-to-the-city suburb for $N, and buy a two-bedroom condo/house/manufactured house in a further-afield retirement community for $N/3.