So I was listening yesterday and the reported says something like… Young people have a hard time getting a mortgage because the older generation has low mortgage rates…blah blah…but now they’re all loosing jobs, getting sick etc so “that will unlock housing or mortgages” something annoying like that.
Well yeah. It happens every generation. Until I suppose nobody can make enough money to rent either much less have a mortgage. I much rather hear about mortgage rates coming down after another happy CEO event. Yeah fucking unlock that shit please!
Yes, each generation dies off and passes its wealth to the next. But the boomers are an unusual case because they hold a lot more wealth relative to their size. Boomers and millennials each account for about 20% of the US population. But boomers hold 50% of the wealth in America, while millennials only hold 8%. The wealth transfer as the boomer generation dies off is going to be massive. And most of that Boomer wealth is tied up in real estate, which will have a big impact on the housing market when it becomes available.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/more-than-half-of-us-wealth-belongs-to-baby-boomers:-will-other-generations-catch-up
https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/
(Gen X is somewhere in the middle and I’m skipping over them, as is tradition. They wouldn’t want it any other way.)
Edit: meant Gen X, not Gen Z.
And not even mentioning Gen X. Yep, whatever.
The problem is two fold. The boomer generation is spending more of their money and leaving less for inheretence.
There was a great article I saw the other day but I can’t find it now.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/08/31/gen-z-boomers-inheritance/74908414007/
https://archive.ph/8gycC