[aschearer]

I live a few blocks from a highly rated high school. The elementary school is next door. The middle school isn't far, either. Point being, this is an excellent place to raise a family. That being said, with one or two exceptions all my neighbors are retired with adult children or grandchildren. (Not living with them, to be clear.)

I can't fault my neighbors for deciding to stick around in their nice, large homes with bedrooms to spare -- especially if they've paid off their mortgages or renegotiated during the pandemic. That said, I can't help but feel something is wrong with this picture.

Why isn't the neighborhood filled with young families? And when these older folks do finally move, will young families be able to afford the increasingly expensive mortgages? Looking at the Case-Shiller index, it's scary -- almost double the pre-2008 peak![1]

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

[seanmcdirmid]

Having more people without kids live in good school districts is probably why those schools are so nice. Perversely, filling them up with families whose kids would actually use the schools would have the opposite effect (this only applies to states where education is funded locally, in states that fund them state wide, not so much).