Baby boomers seemingly have it made in today’s housing market. They hold more housing wealth than any other generation and remain in the properties that millennials and younger generations so desperately want to buy, benefitting from the rock-bottom mortgage rates of the past few years. But they didn’t always have it so easy, and they've got more in common with the 30-somethings entering the current housing market than you might think.
In fact, many market watchers are observing that the housing landscape that greeted the boomers in the 1980s was quite similar to today's. For instance, Mark Fleming, chief economist at Fortune 500 financial services company First American wrote in an October report titled “1980s Déjà Vu for the Housing Market" that today’s housing market “rhymes” with the 1980s, when millions of baby boomers came of homebuying age, leading to a wave of steady demand. Plus, mortgage rates peaked at 18% (which makes 8% sound less bad, right?) and, stop us if you’ve heard this before, inflation drove up home prices.
