This year was a particularly tough one for buyers looking to break into the housing market—and many blame the baby boomers for this year’s low inventory levels, saying that the boomers are holding on to their homes for too long, blocking already-struggling millennials and Gen Zers from homeownership.
But some experts project that downsizing boomers will bring extra inventory to the market starting next year. If true, that would be a major shift, unlocking the greatest portion of housing wealth held by any generation ($18 trillion, according to a Redfin report released in August.)
In early November, Meredith Whitney, deemed the “Oracle of Wall Street” by Bloomberg for accurately predicting the 2008 financial crisis, made the call that a “silver tsunami” of baby boomers would start downsizing in 2024 and 2025. Whitney said 51% of people over the age of 50 are set to downsize to smaller homes, citing an AARP report at a Yahoo Finance Invest Conference. This move would bring more than 30 million housing units to the market.
“You’ll see a supply-demand dynamic shift,” the founder and CEO of Whitney Advisory Group said, adding that she believes this trend will be “rate agnostic.” In other words, she expects this shift to happen no matter what current market rates are because “older people have lower mortgages, if any mortgage at all.”
Others believe, however, that the lock-in effect could well deter boomers from moving, as it has for many homeowners in recent years. After all, owners who are locked in at low mortgage rates are unlikely to want to trade up for a rate in the 6.6% to 8% range.
‘Silver tsunami’ will take more than just two years
Not all housing market watchers foresee such a swift and dramatic shift. With the oldest baby boomers just now turning 80, Mark Fleming, chief economist with Fortune 500 financial services company First American, says that it will take much longer than two years for the mass downsizing to be complete.
“Baby boomers are staying in their homes longer. They're wealthier. They're healthier. They're able to stay in place longer than generations past,” he tells Fortune. “And it is true that the cycle of the large baby boomer generation aging out will happen. But not yet.”
The age of 80 is when the “aging out process” or downsizing, typically begins, Fleming says. The baby boomer generation includes people born between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s, so we still have a way to go before all of them are ready to let go of their current homes.
“Demographics are never a tsunami,” Fleming says. “The baby boomer generation is almost two decades of births. That means they're going to take about two decades to work their way through. In fact, the youngest baby boomers are only just turning 60. There's a long, long way from aging out yet.”
Gary V. Engelhardt, an economics professor at Syracuse University, also predicts the transition will happen over a longer time period.
“Aging and mortality are glacial and largely predictable,” he said in his 2022 report, “Who Will Buy the Baby Boomers’ Homes When They Leave Them.” “Based purely on changing demographics and population growth, there is enough homebuyer demand to meet most of the existing inventory that will come onto the market over the next decade and beyond from older homeowners.”
The ‘silver tsunami’ alone won't fix affordability issues
Although the sudden onset that Whitney predicts would cause an increase in supply, it wouldn’t completely fix the housing affordability challenges many are facing today with relatively high mortgage rates and rising home prices.
“That’s why [property] prices have got to come down to be commensurate with rates,” Whitney said. “There’s a mismatch here.” Housing prices, as measured by the Case-Shiller home price index, are up 6% since January, with the median-priced home now costing more than $312,000.
Further complicating matters, some baby boomers will opt for smaller homes instead of retirement communities, further pushing millennials and Gen Zers out of the competition for the smaller, starter homes the younger generations want. That “big overlap” between select baby boomers and millennials could make the housing market even more competitive, Ali Wolf, chief economist at housing market data company Zonda, previously told Fortune.
Since younger generations are already struggling to come up with cash for a down payment and monthly mortgage installments, it’s more likely that the generation with more cash—likely the boomers—will win in the end.
“The baby boomer will likely be able to tap home equity by selling their existing home, allowing them to perhaps make a more compelling offer on the home compared to the millennials, especially if the latter group are still renting,” Wolf said.
No matter the way that the mass downsizing of baby boomers shakes out, housing market experts have predicted only minor changes in the market during 2024. So expect to see most baby boomers stay in place—at least for now.
“Demographic trends, they don't tsunami,” Fleming says. “They trickle.”
