It's no secret that baby boomers are vastly wealthier than millennials, but just how much helps explain the state of America's gerontocratic housing market. While most millennials have now reached the "peak" homebuying age, their parents' generation is keeping them from buying the starter homes they've long dreamed of. The share of millennial homebuyers surpassed boomers from 2014 until last year, when boomers shoved their children aside and reclaimed their place as America's top homebuying group. The Bank of America Institute, an economic think tank operated by the bank, checked in on the market with its semiannual "Housing Morsel," and isolated the key reasons why this is happening, along with some surprises about just where millennials and boomers are migrating on their housing searches.
The report looks at domestic migration patterns of BofA customers over the past few years, noting that its real-time estimates population flows give it nearly a year of extra insight over Census Bureau data, particularly with regard to migration trends.
