Housing shortfall, costs and affordability

[ac3r]

Just a reminder that all boomers are evil and can't die fast enough: https://cleveroffers.com/research/when-w...eir-homes/

[tomh009]

I don't think that's the insinuation. But the fact that they are staying in their homes longer does exacerbate the housing shortage.

[creative]

Why the f*ck would I sell? I never bought my house as an investment. I bought it to live in. I updated it over the years to make it the perfect house to live in as long as possible. I have the perfect lot, the perfect size house and the perfect location. I take care of my health so that I hopefully will die living here which will hopefully not be for some time. Everything has been updated or replaced. Yes the value is substantially more than what I paid but it was never about the investment. I saved my entire life to be able to afford a comfortable retirement.

[creative]

My last comment was directed as ac3r

[bravado]

Of course they won’t sell - the alternatives are trash (because they made sure none were ever built nearby) and they’re able to control the government to keep their costs low and subsidized by the young + new.

And on top of all of that, they also made it almost impossible to split their property into more units to age in place.

[tomh009]

Why the f*ck would I sell? I never bought my house as an investment. I bought it to live in. I updated it over the years to make it the perfect house to live in as long as possible. I have the perfect lot, the perfect size house and the perfect location. I take care of my health so that I hopefully will die living here which will hopefully not be for some time. Everything has been updated or replaced. Yes the value is substantially more than what I paid but it was never about the investment. I saved my entire life to be able to afford a comfortable retirement.

I'm in no way blaming you (and, yes, I know you were responding to ac3r). However, the fact that many in your cohort are keeping your homes much longer than your parents did does affect housing availability, basically we would need additional housing even without population growth.

[danbrotherston]

Why the f*ck would I sell? I never bought my house as an investment. I bought it to live in. I updated it over the years to make it the perfect house to live in as long as possible. I have the perfect lot, the perfect size house and the perfect location. I take care of my health so that I hopefully will die living here which will hopefully not be for some time. Everything has been updated or replaced. Yes the value is substantially more than what I paid but it was never about the investment. I saved my entire life to be able to afford a comfortable retirement.

I'm in no way blaming you (and, yes, I know you were responding to ac3r). However, the fact that many in your cohort are keeping your homes much longer than your parents did does affect housing availability, basically we would need additional housing even without population growth.

What bravado says is on point though. Even if empty nest boomers wanted to downsize from their family sized home, they generally have limited options to do so and those options usually involve leaving their neighbourhood at least. (and that limitation is largely of their own making)

[ijmorlan]

The proper point is not anything about the merit of any group of people or about what they “should” do.

The proper point is that we can expect, in an actuarial sense, a bunch of properties to come available on the market over the coming years, possibly at a different time than a calculation based on behaviour typical of a different time would have predicted; and it may also inform what changes to zoning laws can help.

So the proper “should” takeaway should be something about allowing people to redevelop or subdivide their properties in ways that don’t require them to move out.

[creative]

Dozens of new listings have been appearing each day on realtor.ca for some time now. Some individuals are still stuck on the belief that their home is worth what it was in 2022 but many new listings for SFH are starting with a 6 and a few starting with a five. I’m also seeing an increase in for rent signs across the area.

[creative]

There are at least 5 basement apartments on my street. The neighbourhood also has a number of redevelopment SFH teardowns. Most often a SFH being replaced with a semi or 2 single family homes. Unfortunately most don’t sell for what the developer needs to make a profit and they become rentals.

[Acitta]

Just a reminder that all boomers are evil and can't die fast enough: https://cleveroffers.com/research/when-w...eir-homes/

I have never even owned a house, so fuck you!

[bravado]

There are at least 5 basement apartments on my street. The neighbourhood also has a number of redevelopment SFH teardowns. Most often a SFH being replaced with a semi or 2 single family homes. Unfortunately most don’t sell for what the developer needs to make a profit and they become rentals.

We could significantly change that profit math if we stopped charging infill the same fees (or more) that we do for new sprawl. But that’s yet another political fight.

People are always going to act in their own interest… why don’t we have urban planning rules and incentives to make that interest align with the public interest? Instead, we have properties that retiring millionaires can’t afford to move out of.

[ac3r]

Just a reminder that all boomers are evil and can't die fast enough: https://cleveroffers.com/research/when-w...eir-homes/

I have never even owned a house, so fuck you!

I'm not sure how you saw a research article about boomer homeowners that refuse to sell their homes being a huge contributor to the housing crisis and thought "this must be about me".

[creative]

Most boomers bought at a time when home ownership wasn’t an investment. It was never meant to fund their retirement. Can you now provide a Canadian research article that backs up this American article. Canadian and American home ownership is totally different. I can also confidently state that American Boomers are much different than most Canadian Boomers. This Boomer, as well as many of my friends, do not correlate with what was stated in this article. None are independently wealthy and many qualify for the Canadian Dental plan due to low income.

[danbrotherston]

Most boomers bought at a time when home ownership wasn’t an investment. It was never meant to fund their retirement. Can you now provide a Canadian research article that backs up this American article. Canadian and American home ownership is totally different. I can also confidently state that American Boomers are much different than most Canadian Boomers. This Boomer, as well as many of my friends, do not correlate with what was stated in this article. None are independently wealthy and many qualify for the Canadian Dental plan due to low income.

Boomers are much more likely to be homeowners and being a homeowner basically makes you wealthy on its own. 

As for home ownership this is a feature of the broken urban development pattern of our cities which is common between the us and Canada. Basically empty nesters cannot move without leaving their community, so they stay in large family houses much longer than makes sense. And even if they do move unless they are moving to medium or large city (which is less common) there is basically no alternative to living in a large family home.