These Baby-Chasing Grandparents Are Turbocharging Demographic Shifts
Kanebridge News
    HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $1,764,302 (+0.48%)       Melbourne $1,066,697 (+0.05%)       Brisbane $1,181,591 (+0.51%)       Adelaide $987,749 (-0.14%)       Perth $1,041,108 (-0.48%)       Hobart $802,593 (+0.38%)       Darwin $826,337 (-2.56%)       Canberra $1,001,004 (+0.17%)       National $1,157,291 (+0.14%)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $793,689 (-0.41%)       Melbourne $524,006 (-0.53%)       Brisbane $754,229 (-3.72%)       Adelaide $563,099 (-0.55%)       Perth $593,974 (+3.43%)       Hobart $554,111 (+2.35%)       Darwin $460,457 (-0.56%)       Canberra $482,673 (+0.62%)       National $612,602 (-0.54%)                HOUSES FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 12,286 (+165)       Melbourne 14,524 (+136)       Brisbane 7,377 (+39)       Adelaide 2,517 (+59)       Perth 5,494 (+86)       Hobart 863 (+3)       Darwin 134 (-5)       Canberra 1,200 (+68)       National 44,395 (+551)                UNITS FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 9,355 (+30)       Melbourne 7,113 (+60)       Brisbane 1,331 (-14)       Adelaide 391 (+7)       Perth 1,174 (+23)       Hobart 175 (+2)       Darwin 228 (-13)       Canberra 1,190 (+19)       National 20,957 (+114)                HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $800 ($0)       Melbourne $580 ($0)       Brisbane $670 ($0)       Adelaide $630 (+$5)       Perth $700 ($0)       Hobart $598 (+$3)       Darwin $750 (-$30)       Canberra $700 ($0)       National $686 (-$4)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $750 ($0)       Melbourne $590 ($0)       Brisbane $650 ($0)       Adelaide $540 ($0)       Perth $650 ($0)       Hobart $475 (+$15)       Darwin $600 ($0)       Canberra $580 ($0)       National $614 (+$1)                HOUSES FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 5,345 (-110)       Melbourne 7,556 (-112)       Brisbane 4,070 (+34)       Adelaide 1,534 (-9)       Perth 2,414 (-24)       Hobart 164 (-13)       Darwin 86 (+5)       Canberra 433 (+3)       National 21,602 (-226)                UNITS FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 7,762 (-17)       Melbourne 6,081 (+25)       Brisbane 2,126 (+27)       Adelaide 431 (+3)       Perth 667 (-79)       Hobart 84 (+4)       Darwin 186 (+14)       Canberra 643 (-7)       National 17,980 (-30)                HOUSE ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 2.36% (↓)       Melbourne 2.83% (↓)       Brisbane 2.95% (↓)     Adelaide 3.32% (↑)      Perth 3.50% (↑)      Hobart 3.87% (↑)        Darwin 4.72% (↓)       Canberra 3.64% (↓)       National 3.08% (↓)            UNIT ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND       Sydney 4.91% (↑)      Melbourne 5.85% (↑)      Brisbane 4.48% (↑)      Adelaide 4.99% (↑)        Perth 5.69% (↓)     Hobart 4.46% (↑)      Darwin 6.78% (↑)        Canberra 6.25% (↓)     National 5.21% (↑)             HOUSE RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND         Sydney 1.2% (↓)       Melbourne 1.4% (↓)     Brisbane 1.0% (↑)      Adelaide 1.1% (↑)      Perth 1.0% (↑)        Hobart 0.4% (↓)       Darwin 0.6% (↓)       Canberra 1.4% (↓)     National 1.0% (↑)             UNIT RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 1.3% (↑)      Melbourne 2.3% (↑)        Brisbane 1.2% (↓)       Adelaide 0.9% (↓)       Perth 1.0% (↓)       Hobart 1.2% (↓)     Darwin 1.1% (↑)      Canberra 2.6% (↑)        National 1.4% (↓)            AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL HOUSES AND TREND       Sydney 28.0 (↑)      Melbourne 27.9 (↑)        Brisbane 28.3 (↓)       Adelaide 25.4 (↓)     Perth 32.9 (↑)      Hobart 26.1 (↑)      Darwin 32.1 (↑)        Canberra 27.1 (↓)     National 28.5 (↑)             AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL UNITS AND TREND       Sydney 28.1 (↑)      Melbourne 28.2 (↑)        Brisbane 24.5 (↓)     Adelaide 24.4 (↑)        Perth 36.8 (↓)       Hobart 26.9 (↓)       Darwin 34.3 (↓)     Canberra 38.2 (↑)        National 30.2 (↓)           
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These Baby-Chasing Grandparents Are Turbocharging Demographic Shifts

From Austin, Texas, to Charleston, S.C., golf and grandbabies beckon

By HEATHER GILLERS
Mon, Nov 18, 2024 8:46amGrey Clock 4 min

Gillian Held wanted her daughter to grow up around her grandparents. But moving from suburban Orlando back to New Jersey would have meant downsizing. So last year, Gillian’s parents sold their house and relocated to Florida several months before baby Nora was born.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be Grandpa on a screen,’” said David Held, a retired New York City police officer who now helps watch his 7-month-old granddaughter two days a week.

Baby chasers are one of the cuddlier demographic trends contributing to America’s southward migration, a shift that is shaping everything from home building to municipal finance. Retirees have long sought out Southern states’ warmer weather and year-round golfing. Lower living costs and ample jobs have prompted a decade-long population boom in the South, and now those states boast a new attraction for many older Americans: their grandchildren.

Decades of rising stock prices and home values have left older Americans with much of the nation’s wealth, Federal Reserve data show. High mortgage rates are no obstacle to longtime homeowners who can sell their paid-off houses and buy new ones without a mortgage. In an era of more-flexible work, relocation doesn’t have to mean retirement. When grandparents live nearby, families can spend less on child care—and eldercare.

Housing-research firm Zonda publishes a yearly Baby Chaser Index ranking cities by growth in residents 25 to 44 and 60 to 79. Austin, Texas, Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., topped last year’s list. Ali Wolf , the firm’s chief economist, first heard about the trend six or seven years ago from home builders: “They would say, ‘We sold a house to a millennial and then we sold a house to their parents.’”

It all started in the 1960s, when baby boomers became the first generation to routinely move hundreds of miles for school or work, said Andrew Carle, who oversees a program in senior-living administration at Georgetown University. For much of the 20th century, parents in the U.S. raised their children close to where they grew up—at least those parents who hadn’t emigrated to escape persecution or dire poverty.

“We went away to college, we moved multiple times for our jobs,” said Carle, who is in his mid-60s. “We could move anywhere but we are choosing to move closer to our adult kids.”

A new job and lower home prices prompted Alonzo Emery ’s daughter and son-in-law to move with their two children from San Mateo, Calif., to the Austin area a decade ago. Emery, a retired vocational training program administrator, and his wife, Mary, followed two years later after a third grandchild was born needing medical treatment.

Texas’ culture and weather have been an adjustment for the couple, and they miss their son and son-in-law in California. But Emery, a former Arizona State University running back, gets to attend his 14-year-old grandson’s football games. He and Mary are learning dance moves from their 11-year-old granddaughter. “She’s put us on video,” said Emery, 73.

Moves like the Emerys’ have wide-ranging impacts for home building and even city budgets. The nation’s fastest-growing city is now the Austin suburb of Georgetown, Texas, where almost a fifth of the population lives in a single massive age-restricted housing community. This year, the city nabbed a triple-A bond rating.

The median age of repeat home buyers hit 61 this year, a four-decade high, according to the National Association of Realtors, with the most commonly cited reason for selling being the desire to be closer to family or friends. Twenty-one of last year’s 50 fastest-selling planned communities have built or are building age-restricted areas inside larger all-ages developments, according to consultant RCLCO.

Nashville, Tenn.-based Kinloch Partners, which rents out homes near large corporate offices in the Southeast, estimates that the retired parents of newly transferred executives live in around 10% of them.

“They have a guaranteed income. They don’t trash the house,” said Chief Executive Bruce McNeilage. Some pay a year of rent upfront.

For young families, the value of a nearby grandparent keeps growing. Child-care costs are up 6.4% over the past two years to a median monthly price of around $1,500 in major metro areas. The share of mothers with a child under 3 who work has risen over the past three decades to 66% last year from 58%, according to the Labor Department.

Gillian Held and her husband, Jordan, employ a nanny three days a week. Her parents take Tuesdays and Wednesdays, staying overnight at the couple’s home, where they have their own bedroom.

“We fully talk to them like they’re employees,” said Gillian, 32. “It’s an ongoing joke that when they want to go on vacation they have to take PTO.”

David and Cynthia Held , both 62, had long toyed with the idea of retiring to Florida. New Jersey’s cold winters and high living costs were wearing on them. Then in 2019, the Helds lost their son, Gillian’s brother Craig, to suicide at age 30. Living close to their daughter came to feel even more important.

By the end of 2022, Gillian and Jordan were married and talking about becoming parents. Home values where the Helds lived in Monmouth County, N.J., had shot up 27% over the previous two years, according to Zillow . David and Cynthia sold their house and moved in with Gillian in October 2023. A few months later, Cynthia fell in love with a place in a 55-and-over community in Port St. Lucie. They paid in cash.

The economics can be tougher for would-be baby chasers with grandchildren in the Northeast. Retired professor and author Michelle Herman and her husband are planning a move from Columbus, Ohio, to the New York City area to help raise future grandchildren. “Financially it makes zero sense,” she said.

There can be other snags. Herman contributes to a parenting advice column and recently counselled families considering a move to come to a clear understanding about how much child care the grandparents will provide. Grandparents should also do their own soul-searching before they relocate and have realistic expectations, she said.

“I actually have known people who’ve done this and came back because it didn’t work out,” Herman said.

—Nicole Friedman contributed to this article.



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It’s the corporate gamble of the moment: Can you run a company, increasing sales and juicing profits, without adding people?

American employers are increasingly making the calculation that they can keep the size of their teams flat—or shrink through layoffs—without harming their businesses.

Part of that thinking is the belief that artificial intelligence will be used to pick up some of the slack and automate more processes. Companies are also hesitant to make any moves in an economy many still describe as uncertain.

JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer told investors recently that the bank now has a “very strong bias against having the reflective response” to hire more people for any given need. Aerospace and defense company RTX boasted last week that its sales rose even without adding employees.

Goldman Sachs , meanwhile, sent a memo to staffers this month saying the firm “will constrain head count growth through the end of the year” and reduce roles that could be more efficient with AI. Walmart , the nation’s largest private employer, also said it plans to keep its head count roughly flat over the next three years, even as its sales grow.

“If people are getting more productive, you don’t need to hire more people,” Brian Chesky , Airbnb’s chief executive, said in an interview. “I see a lot of companies pre-emptively holding the line, forecasting and hoping that they can have smaller workforces.”

Airbnb employs around 7,000 people, and Chesky says he doesn’t expect that number to grow much over the next year. With the help of AI, he said he hopes that “the team we already have can get considerably more work done.”

Many companies seem intent on embracing a new, ultralean model of staffing, one where more roles are kept unfilled and hiring is treated as a last resort. At Intuit , every time a job comes open, managers are pushed to justify why they need to backfill it, said Sandeep Aujla , the company’s chief financial officer. The new rigor around hiring helps combat corporate bloat.

“That typical behavior that settles in—and we’re all guilty of it—is, historically, if someone leaves, if Jane Doe leaves, I’ve got to backfill Jane,” Aujla said in an interview. Now, when someone quits, the company asks: “Is there an opportunity for us to rethink how we staff?”

Intuit has chosen not to replace certain roles in its finance, legal and customer-support functions, he said. In its last fiscal year, the company’s revenue rose 16% even as its head count stayed flat, and it is planning only modest hiring in the current year.

The desire to avoid hiring or filling jobs reflects a growing push among executives to see a return on their AI spending. On earnings calls, mentions of ROI and AI investments are increasing, according to an analysis by AlphaSense, reflecting heightened interest from analysts and investors that companies make good on the millions they are pouring into AI.

Many executives hope that software coding assistants and armies of digital agents will keep improving—even if the current results still at times leave something to be desired.

The widespread caution in hiring now is frustrating job seekers and leading many employees within organizations to feel stuck in place, unable to ascend or take on new roles, workers and bosses say.

Inside many large companies, HR chiefs also say it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict just how many employees will be needed as technology takes on more of the work.

Some employers seem to think that fewer employees will actually improve operations.

Meta Platforms this past week said it is cutting 600 jobs in its AI division, a move some leaders hailed as a way to cut down on bureaucracy.

“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Alexandr Wang , Meta’s chief AI officer, wrote in a memo to staff seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Though layoffs haven’t been widespread through the economy, some companies are making cuts. Target on Thursday said it would cut about 1,000 corporate employees, and close another 800 open positions, totaling around 8% of its corporate workforce. Michael Fiddelke , Target’s incoming CEO, said in a memo sent to staff that too “many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”

A range of other employers, from the electric-truck maker Rivian to cable and broadband provider Charter Communications , have announced their own staff cuts in recent weeks, too.

Operating with fewer people can still pose risks for companies by straining existing staffers or hurting efforts to develop future leaders, executives and economists say. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” said Matthew Martin , senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “You want to keep your head count costs down now—but you also have to have an eye on the future.”

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