As Boomers Downsize, Competition Grows for Simpler Homes

Older buyers seeking smaller or easier-to-maintain homes are crashing into younger buyers in a housing market where the competition is fierce.

Soaring home prices and new construction favouring bigger builds have interrupted traditional patterns of homeownership for buyers across the country. Smaller houses, desired by aging seniors and young couples alike, are among the toughest to find. The supply of homes up to 130sqm is near a five-decade low, according to data from Freddie Mac.

In 2020, about 28% of real-estate transactions could be characterized as downsizing, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. The majority of these transactions are made by buyers 55 or older.

“We have a housing shortage,” Mr. Yun said. “Clearly from the age patterns, young people want to upsize, and the older generation is looking to downsize, but not greatly—only 100 or 200 square feet smaller than where they’d been living.”

The typical housing cycle for many families—kids go off to school, household sizes shrink, empty-nesters hand off their family homes to new households raising their own children—has been disrupted in recent years, said Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac. The large baby boomer population outnumbers the rising Gen X-ers, who would be the ones to traditionally take over the family homes.

Many boomers want to “age in place,” meaning living in their original home independently into their later years. A 2018 survey of 2,287 adults from the AARP shows seniors would prefer to stay in the communities where they already live.

“They like their grocery store, they like their doctor, they like their local options,” said Karan Kaul, senior research associate at the Urban Institute.

Once they decide to move to a smaller home, they end up competing with first-time buyers and limited supply, Mr. Kiefer said. Price growth has been strongest for smaller, less-expensive homes. “That works against you in terms of what you can get for your buck,” Mr. Kiefer said.

If they haven’t paid off their mortgage, older buyers might find they could sell their current home at a high price but then pay more in mortgage payments on a smaller place. The share of older homeowners with debt has steadily increased over the past decade, rising to 55.4% in 2019 from 33.2% in 2007. This rise is driven in large part by mortgage debt, according to data from the Urban Institute.

After retiring from working at the New York Department of Education for 33 years, Enid Maldonado-Salgado started to make a plan to move from her current home in Flushing, in New York City’s Queens borough, to further east on Long Island, where she and her husband can be closer to family.

The 60-year-old worked with a Realtor for a year before retirement. Ms. Maldonado-Salgado said her goal was to find a home valued at 80% of her current home’s worth. She found the house-hunting process difficult, even with the money she had saved from refinancing her existing home and the substantial profit she expects from selling it.

For Ms. Maldonado-Salgado, downsizing meant finding an affordable home that wouldn’t require too much maintenance or upkeep. She wanted the freedom to travel and to be closer to her grandchildren.

Ms. Maldonado-Salgado is now in the process of closing on a new house in Smithtown. The new house is nearly equal in square footage to her house in Queens.

“It wasn’t about finding something smaller, it was about finding something that benefited my budget,” she said. “We wanted to make things simpler for ourselves.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described the global economy as “surprisingly resilient” amid rapid interest rate rises to quell high inflation since 2022, post-pandemic supply chain disruptions, a short-term spike in energy prices due to the war in Ukraine and increased geopolitical tensions involving China and the Middle East.

The IMF’s biannual World Economic Outlook report says the world has so far avoided stagflation and recession, with large pandemic savings enabling households to cope with higher rates and inflation, and strong immigration in advanced economies creating unusually tight labour markets.

IMF economic counsellor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said most indicators point to a soft landing for the global economy and the IMG now expects “less economic scarring from the pandemic”. He noted that markets had reacted exuberantly in recent weeks to the prospect of central banks lowering interest rates soon.

However, the IMF says global growth will moderate over the next five years to its lowest level in decades. It projects 3.2 percent global growth in 2024 and 2025, the same pace as 2023, with still-high borrowing costs, the withdrawal of fiscal support and weak productivity growth weighing economic activity down.

Australia is expected to underperform other advanced economies, especially the United States, this year but will surge beyond them from 2025. The IMF predicts annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.5 percent in Australia in 2024, which is well below our long-term pre-pandemic average of 2.5 percent. The US is expected to book above-average growth of 2.7 percent in 2024 and the world’s advanced economies are tipped to average 1.7 percent growth.

Australian economic growth will then move above other advanced economies and maintain upward momentum through til 2029. The IMF predicts 2 percent GDP growth for Australia in 2025 and 2.3 percent in 2029. For the US, the IMF expects 1.9 percent growth in 2025 and 2.1 percent in 2029. For the advanced economies in aggregate, the IMF forecasts 1.8 percent growth in 2025 and 1.7 percent in 2029.

The IMF said higher interest rates had had less effect on the US economy compared to Australia because most US mortgages are on long-term fixed rates and household debt has been lower since the global financial crisis. In Australia, most loans are on variable rates and therefore immediately impacted by every rate rise, household debt is high, and housing supply is restricted.

“The exceptional recent performance of the United States is certainly impressive and a major driver of global growth, but it reflects strong demand factors as well, including a fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability,” said Mr Gourinchas.

An example of unusual fiscal policy is the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes US$369 billion in new spending to encourage green energy investment. “This raises short-term risks to the disinflation process, as well as longer-term fiscal and financial stability risks for the global economy since it risks pushing up global funding costs,” he said.

While things are going well now, Mr Gourinchas said risks to global economic progress remain.

“On the downside, new price spikes stemming from geopolitical tensions, including those from the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza and Israel, could, along with persistent core inflation where labour markets are still tight, raise interest rate expectations and reduce asset prices. A divergence in disinflation speeds among major economies could also cause currency movements that put financial sectors under pressure.”

Mr Gourinchas said growth in China could falter, hurting trading partners, without a comprehensive response to its property sector downturn. “Domestic demand will remain lacklustre for some time unless strong measures and reforms address the root cause. Public debt dynamics are also of concern, especially if the property crisis morphs into a local public finance crisis.”

He also noted that weak productivity growth remains a challenge for the whole world and “much hope rests on artificial intelligence delivering strong productivity gains in the medium term”.

As Boomers Downsize, Competition Grows for Simpler Homes

Smaller houses, desired by aging seniors and young couples, are among the toughest to find.

It’s a slow start for 2024 but the longer term outlook for the local economy is strong