Wall Street has spent billions buying homes. A crackdown is looming: on.wsj.com/3WF63ht

Wealth inequality doesn't disappear just because you're old.

Something they dont talk about is how over 25% of new home were actually bought by investors, not people looking to live there. Even if boomers sell all the houses or more home become available, the problem wont go away, as wealthy investors will still buy up those supply of houses. This will keep the houses prices up.

Simple. The people who are winning are winning big, and the people who are losing are losing big.

"Homeless because of a medical emergency" America.. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

My landlord is a lawyer. He doesn't own my current rental, he owns the entire building. He factually makes more money from rent than from practicing law. When his son wanted to become "independent" he simply moved, zero cost, to one of the dozens of apartments his father owns. When I first wanted to rent one of his properties, he negotiated tooth and nail every single € like his livelihood depended on it. . . now that we are contractually binned, we sometimes chat and he can't help himself talk about how "dangerous" is to rent because of squatters and how seemingly "overprotective" the law is towards tenants. . . My man . . . you are a self employed lawyer that sucks well north of half my salary . . . and everybody's salary in this building, each month. Every time I contact you for something broken, your wife picks up the phone from a different continent.

Working your whole life, paying off your home and living in it is ''selfish''.

Blackrock will buy all the houses a boomer leaves

I’m a younger boomer who identifies more with generation X, than with older boomers. I exited college at a time when no one was hiring. It’s always been a struggle to keep up with expenses. I’m grateful I’m not homeless, but life is still exhausting.

Stop pitting generations against each other.

If I was a boomer and had bought a house, why would I move out of my house just because I am getting old? Isn't that the American dream..?

So not all boomers are booming the same.

Baby boomers are retiring or on the verge to, so how do we deal with such recession-influenced market conditions? Typically my $250k worth of holdings go up 8% then lose 20% right after and the cycle continues, I’m confused and truly sick of the system

Not a word about banks, equity firms, Blackrock, buying up houses after the 2008 cruises as assets. You cannot discuss the housing cruises without discussing this. Or discussing that largest luxury houses generate more profit than smaller non-luxury. Developers build for profit.

Housing has gradually become a problem that is rooted in it becoming a speculative investment rather than a long term equity holding. A tax system that recognized the difference at all levels from local to national would go a long way to fixing this. Wall street big business should not be involved in holding houses for purely speculation purposes.

As a millennial I admit I was a bit taken aback when they said boomers are aging in place like they are committing some kind of crime or something. And I get it. I'm frustrated because I'm working two jobs and yet I live in a one bedroom apartment with my husband and my toddler. No one is more frustrated with the housing crisis than us but at the same time if I was a boomer I would hold onto my house too. Like what are you asking them to do exactly? Just like everyone else they have no where else to go (without severely financially downgrading that is) because everything is either full or severely over priced to the max.

BUILD MORE SMALL HOMES, REDUCE REGULATORY CONSTRAINTS ON NEW BUILDS

Let me see if I got all the points from the video: 1) Boomer’s fault there is a shortage of houses since they are electing to stay in the house they bought years ago. 2) people that bought houses in the 70’s-80’s, when interest rates were DOUBLE DIGITS, are bad people for refinancing their homes when interest rates fell. And are bad people for not selling their homes now so younger families could move into them. 3) people that checked out of society and got “hooked on cocaine and crack” in the 80’s and 90’s, didn’t buy houses, because they were on skid row taking drugs. Those guys are now in their 50’s and older, and they are homeless. But, since the boomers don’t want to sell their current (debt-free) house and buy a smaller house for more money, they are bad because they didn’t get strung out on drugs. They went to college or trade school, held down jobs, started families and paid the mortgages for 30 YEARS. I get your point. Those Boomers are bad.😢

Boomers keeping their homes has nothing to do with the plight of homelessness. Got nothing to do with housing prices either. That’s just picking out one demographic of home owners and seemingly blaming them for not dying off fast enough. Why would owning a home at age 68 contribute to these problems more than owning a home at age 35?

So, now they are blaming older people who dont want a new mortgage or to live out their life in the house they paid for? How do these blatant lies work?

I'm a young boomer. The difference between myself and my older siblings is stark. Glad someone is shedding light on this issue as the common narrative is that all boomers have it so-called easy.

I really do not mind older people holding on to their homes. That is absolutely their right and preference. What I do not like is when they really go out of their way to prevent other people from having homes. Many of these homeowners will block, delay, and limit any housing development near to them especially if its affordable. On one hand, they block the city from growing its boundary. And on the other hand, they block all densification efforts by private developers in 80% of the city area. But they love to tear down poor neighborhoods for highways and parking lots.

i'm 30 and I purchased 5 years ago. I understand why they won't leave. With my interest rate, i'm staying for life.

Please don’t put all the blame on Boomers. Corporations are buying more than their fair share of houses in every state.

How dumb it sounds @1:17 to say older people living in their own homes is exacerbating the supply. Sooo bad. 😢😂😂😂😂😂

Huh? If someone owns their house that's their property. They don't need to sell or downsize. Why is this a "problem".

More and more people might face a tough time in retirement. Low-paying jobs, inflation, and high rents make it hard to save. Now, middle-class Americans find it tough to own a home too, leaving them without a place to retire without any investment. Retirement becomes truly fulfilling when you possess two essential elements: financial resources and a meaningful purpose in life. Make prudent investment choices to secure good returns and ensure a comfortable retirement. .

I'm a later boomer looking for a house. I think a lot of older boomers would have downsized when the marker was better...somewhere in the same town. I see investors picking up every affordable house available to flip, hold onto or rent. The lower end real estate has become the place of investors not home owners, part of this is driven by the real estate industry and developers building stupid expensive houses to make more profit. If all the low end are rentals and you can't afford a stupidly monstrous house, you are stuck renting or homeless. Like many, I think of moving overseas where I can afford to live. Just my opinion.

Wait just a minute! It’s your right to keep a home you’ve sacrificed to buy and live in it til you die AND will it how you wish. This program feels like vulturism. The housing crisis IS NOT A “BABY BOOMER” PROBLEM!

Um, if they own their home free and clear, then they have a right to stay in their homes. I don't understand why this is framed as such a 'problem'? People used to buy homes to live in for the rest of their lives. The term 'forever homes' was coined later by younger generations, who either grew tired of their first homes or didn't plan ahead and now need more room. Why do I continually see this framed as a problem? It's their business if they want to keep their homes. If a senior wants to downsize that's a problem ONLY, as the housing market is criminally expensive now. Don't vilify Boomers because they had forethought and business sense.

Old people are wise enough to realize what a screw rent is. They're staying in their homes as long as they can. More entry level homes heed to be built for sale, not lease.

My wife and I bought our first home just one year out of college in 1987. It was a 3/1 with a pool in Orlando for $87,500. The interest rate was 10.63%. We were able to handle the payment with a high interest rate because houses at the time were so much cheaper.

Imagine being born in the time of the most prosperity and least competition and still ending up homeless

This is so incredibly sad for our elders and for our own futures. Things aren’t looking good right now. It’s affecting my mental health

I'm not a boomer and there are a lot of things we can blame on them, but this isn't really on them. The housing shortage is currently more on private equity buying up not only homes but mobile homes and mobile home parks. We need to put legislation in place to prevent out-of-state companies from buying up more than a certain percentage of homes in any state. We also need national legislation to force private equity firms with more than a certain amount of real estate to reserve a percentage of those homes/apartments for low- to mid-income buyers and renters.

Financial planning is like navigation. If you know where you are and where you want to go, navigation isn't such a great problem. It's when you don't know the two points that it's difficult

The gig work economy started with Reagan. Offshoring, and the US national and trade deficit driven global economy as well. All those good jobs that the silent generation and older boomers had started drying up with Reagan. With productive labor intensive jobs offshored to places like China and the profits of that overseas production coming back into the U.S. as Wall Street investment and real estate investment, the cost of living and the cost of doing business accelerated. Homes were no longer for living in. They were for speculation. America was full of hot money looking for a return. This is why the U.S. has been privatizing its social and physical infrastructure for the last 50 years. The owners of all those offshore profits want a place to put their money that will give them a larger return than a bank savings account. This is why everything in America that is expensive to begin with, like housing, healthcare, and education, ...is expensive. In other countries, healthcare is free, housing affordable, and education free. That would be impossible in the U.S. because the investors would have to look elsewhere to put their money, and there just aren't enough productive activities that the human race can do to satisfy their need for profits. So they prevent us from making healthcare free, housing free or affordable, and education free so that they can charge us for it. They own the insurance companies, so if we miss payments, the insurance companies will take our homes away, cars, all our belongings. They will throw us out on the street, where being homeless is illegal. The police will harass us and beat us, and we there we will be - homeless and dying in the richest country that has ever existed on earth. God bless America!

Increase the number of housing permits! Stop gatekeeping the supply!

The housing market has been turned into an income generator for private equity. Millennial buyers are competing with investors so why try to blame older people for staying put? Assisted living would drain their assets into the pockets of private equity and the family would inherit nothing.

67. Not 65 anymore! 67. Media needs to get a grip on this FACT.

Because one hospital bill from ONE serious illness can wipe out a lifetime of savings. Make America great again indeed.

Crazy that everyone knows the solution is to build more but we aren’t doing it

My boomer mother has lived in the same house since 1976. 1.5 acres 6 bedroom house paid off. She is going to give it to her Gen X kids (me) who will not sell it. I will own 2 homes by then. So though you can bank on a possible silver tsunami (there will be a bump) I am not sure it will be as big as intended. I feel like billionaires are trying to buy up all property so that in a few decades, you won't be able to own real land but only rent so they have complete control on that aspect of the economy. Crazy? Look at Blackrock.

As one of the youngest boomers, I’ve often felt no connection to the typical boomer generalizations. Distinguishing between older & younger boomers is long overdue.

Crazy to think about a country that gives its most marginalized people NOWHERE to live. If you aren't on the hamster wheel doing your part, and don't have resources, you get criminalized. At least other countries give them shantytowns and let them exist rather than treat them like dust; pushed around and discarded. Feels like money is the only compass.

Can we talk about all the landlords/ realtors/private equity groups colluding with Real Page and driving market prices to unrealistic prices?

This caption sounds like Divide & Conquer. This explains why random young people are expressing hostility towards me.Your messages are telling young people that older people Are the Enemy! TOTALLY Not True! Stops making us a target. Please

"Housing experts" often lie. When prices start to dramatically drop they will extremely drop as investors will pull out.

This is THE END of first-time home ownership and the slow death of the middle class in a generation. 77 bids over 4 years for our first home as native Tennesseans ALL OUTBID by cash investors. Wonder why we Millenials & Gen Z are doom spending? Why we aren't having kids, getting married? We CAN'T afford a home, car, kids, retirement... Child care costs 1/3 of the average income PER CHILD. At 35 y/o kids and a first home passed us by. Don't be surprised that these younger generations want to see it all burn. This economy isn't for us. It never has been. We've been checked out, not by choice.

Housing cannot be both an investment asset and a human right at the same time.

Many of us want to downsize, but the smaller houses cost more than the house we are in. So we live in the space we need. Too a lot of us are in-between houses for our kids, like my husband and I whose youngest girl and her husband have moved in to finish college after finishing their contract with the military. So for now our big home has become two family home until they find a place they feel like they can afford.

So, Boomers own all the monies and are also the homeless problem... this whole vid seems like an exercise in "Let's Blame the Boomers"...

My 95 year old folks still live in their house. How dare they???

the problem is INVESTERS! trying to blame boomers is ridiculous. disgraceful! disgusting! pathetic!

Don’t blame Boomers for housing shortages. New housing construction has not kept up with the increase in population. You cannot blame retirees for keeping their property. My dad kept his properties and me and my sister inherited them when he passed. We will keep the property and not sell, and my daughter will inherit what I give her. It’s probably the only way some folks will be able to afford housing and property in the future because things have gotten so astronomically high due to inflation. It’s call generational wealth. When you inherit property and land from your parents, keep it.

Interesting. I'm a Boomer living in my third house. That means that in addition to my own housing I have left TWO houses for others to live in. That is 3 houses that I have contributed to solving the homeless crisis. You're welcome.

Meanwhile office buildings are half empty

Not surprising that the WSJ totally missed that corporations are purchasing entry level homes which breaks the market cycle of the past years.

My aunt in the San Jose area needs to sell her house since she's having mobility issues but doesn't want to go into senior living and can't find any affordable condos. The condos cost the same as her house. Her house is dated, built in the early 70s and hasn't been updated since the early 90s. One realtor thought odds were someone would buy her home and tear it down to build something larger and more modern.

Somehow it’s the Boomer’s fault for the billionaire class getting into the speculative market in housing: from vrbo/abb to rentals to the concept of home ownership as transient as your Apple music purchases, it’s an incredible blindspot. Even in rural areas homes are out of reach.

I've said this in other videos: 50% of older adults in America live on under $30,000 a year. Many live on meager Social Security payments and must choose between food and prescriptions. We've talked to people struggling to pay their utility bills and property taxes. What makes this worse is many cannot find employment at their age. The social safety net needs to be expanded for our elders. They are struggling in a big way.

Interest rates are higher. This is the main reason people stay in their current home. We can't afford to move the new house, the payment is too high. How do you miss this in your academic research. 🤔

A correction to your statement on CA property taxes: most senior CA homeowners can transfer their lower property tax rates if they mover within the same county, or to a county that shares reciprocal rights. This has allowed many in the Bay Area to downsize while staying in the Bay Area.

Institutional ownership of housing is the problem not broke boomers needing to stay put out of lack of financial options.

4:56 I noticed the steady increase in price after 2013. And then it sharply went up in 2020.

I appreciate this video, but I keep finding myself having to pause the video to read the charts, that don't stay on screen for long enough. It's also difficult to read the charts when they are overlaid with an interview subject that is not talking specifically about what is on the chart.

Typical American disregard for seniors Oh America the beautiful

Most boomer wealth is real estate so I guess the homeless ones rented.

I think no one ever talks about the size of population overall. We went from 130M at the start of ww2 to 340M ish now. That is a massive amount of people on land that hasn't tripled in size. It plays a role and especially in cities.

Retired boomer here in my mid-60s. Live in whats considered a desirable community in the North Shore on Long Island. Have been in my home for over 30 years. All but one of my neighbors have been in their homes for the same time or longer. No one is moving as it is difficult to replicate what we have in place here. Only house that has sold in last two years is directly across the street from me where the owner died after living there 54 years. Took my years to move in here and figure I will pass away here.

I’m tired of generations being labeled. And then they’re hypocritical. The younger generations are really quick to label boomers as bad but then they don’t want to hear it if something negative is said about them. Every generation has issues that they had to deal with. And every person has a unique experience. Quit blaming everybody else for your problems.

This is infuriating. Homelessness shouldn't even be a thing.

I have a few friends that are struggling in their 60's, One factor that is common they all have been divorced.

It's truly disgusting how the financial class seek to divide families like this

My parents (boomers) back in 1991 bought a home for $40k. I grew up lower end middle class. They could barely afford the Mortgage payment. Both of my parents worked I was a typical Gen X kids. So, even back then times were hard. Each Generation has their struggles. Back then it was low wages. Today it's called Bidenomics. I honestly don't know a time when it wasn't hard on each generation. They just didn't have social media to complain for the whole world to see.

Blaming boomer for keeping property they bought is a ridiculous spin for this article.

This is scary. I'm 60 years old & live in Newark NJ, and all my life anyone could get expect to get a decent apartment for under $1000 per month, but no more. I'm at the low end of IT, and I had a "window" (as per the narration) to buy a house, but did not. Luckily, I just got a good paying job, but even if I'm lucky enough to get an apartment for $1500 per month, I won't be able to save much.

This generation bankrupted themselve with EVs, that deprecited like laptop computers. They passed regulations to destroy cheap energy, and transportation, causing record inflation. Now that they've ruined their future, they're jealously looking at others, claiming them "over housed". If your regulations make you so poor, you start coveting what others worked so hard to get, what good has it done you?

They should do what it takes to ensure that real estate is not something to profit out of, it is a basic need. They could do this using tax structures and by keeping Wall Street out of real estate.

Interesting video 👍

I was homeless 20yrs ago in my 20s after both my parents died back to back. My boomer relatives refused to help saying I should have planned better & needed a life lesson so I lived in my car. Planned to be alone at 21!? Some of those boomers now need help. They should have planned better. I'm still bitter. If one specific relative asks for help I will give it no questions asked, everyone else can learn a life lesson.

Richest country only to the top 1%

My boss is retiring this summer he has 5 houses and is buying a 6th this week. He complains daily about having to pay $200 for health Insurance. Yet me as a millennial pay way more than that for health insurance make it make sense?

If family homes had remained generational, and people didn't move thousands of miles away, many problems would be solved. Perhaps embracing remote work could allow multi-generational homes to make a comeback.

You're blaming the housing crisis on the elderly in this country!? What kind of sick disconnected twist on things is that? Housing and homes are for the citizens of the country, all of them. The housing shortage is mostly because of greedy corporate interests. In some neighborhoods corporations, some not even in this country, have purchased 30% or more of the home inventory and have turned them into high priced rental units, that most people can't afford.

The definition of "homeless" in this country is different than most others in the world... drugs addiction and mental illness would be the objective reality here. People who actually lose everything without those similarities usually recieve the help or housing they need statistically. As a paramedic, when I hear homeless, I dont think aww this poor person lost their home or bank account... I know, from experience, %100 of the time they are drug addicts or phych patients unable to make "housing", lifes number 1 priority.

One huge thing you left out in the aging-in-place discussion on not downsizing, is that starter homes are outright illegal in a lot of places now due to zoning. My parents' town of ~5000 is actually having a bit of an insurance crisis because most of the houses were built on 1/3-acre-lots which would be illegal to rebuild after a disaster.

i really appreciate hearing about the other side of the "boomers own everything" story. this just shows me we really need to re-incentivize building more starter homes

6:25 Congress is reluctant to pass $3B bill to help elderly homeless US citizens, but swift to send $60B to aid foreign wars. What's going on here.

Most of the houses I see being built are bigger than the houses I was raised in and also bigger than the house I raised a family in. It’s definitely not necessary to have a McMansion to raise your 1 or 2 children in, but it does look nicer on social media

The only thing more frightening than being homeless AGAIN is being homeless now that I am disabled. I've never been able to purchase a house so I've always rented. My meager SSDI can't compete with my rent going up every year like it does... plus food prices and everything else. It's a really challenging time for a whole lot of people just barely scraping by.

I'm a younger boomer. I have 10 months left on my mortgage, so yeah, I'm going to be ageing in place. When I die, my child (now an adult) will get the the 4BR house for free. There will be no "silver tsunami".

There is nothing wrong with people choosing to live in the dwellings that they purchased. What we need to do is build *more* housing, i.e. more apartments and condominiums "boomers 'aging in place' (read: remaining in the home that they bought) is exacerbating the housing shortage" A normal country wouldn't have a housing shortage because 70 year olds aren't uprooting themselves from their family homes and moving. A normal country would have enough housing for everyone such that a situation like this one would never arise.

This is so true. Born in 1964 I am labelled as a boomer. Nevertheless, my generation never had the same economic environments as the previous boomer generation. The job market was already filled up with these geezers and the crisis had ravaged the economy after 1973 then 1979. Unemployment rates were very high at start. It is only by the mid 90s that the economy started to reshape and after that, inflation and interest rates kept coming down due to globalization (that comes with its own set of problems). I was lucky to ride the best I could these waves of good news at last by staying in employment and flipping houses. But really, my first 5/6 years after university were really hard. I could only buy my first house at the age of 37.

The phrase "high risk, low skilled jobs" just doesn't make sense and is alarming.

Where I live in Monument Colorado (a great place to live) the amount of new homes and apartments being constructed is astronomically. Adjacent to Colorado Springs and next the U.S. Air Force Academy. The town is within commuting distance to Denver, now due to a recent freeway expansion. Surprisingly, even with giant numbers of new residential dwellings, the prices are still relatively high.

So it's almost like our economic system was never meant to work or be beneficial to citizens in the first place

Used to say a whole generation of ladder pullers. I guess it’s just half a generation of ladder pullers.

Let's also remember that a lot of housing stock owned by Boomers is not the most desirable. My parents bought their only house in 1964 and sold it in 2007. The house was built in 1952. It was a 1500 sq ft ranch. But, it had a one car garage. It didn't have a family room (although the basement was finished). The master bedroom had an attached 1/2 bath. Houses today, even more modest houses, generally have a 2-car garage, a family room on the first floor, and a full bath connected to the master bedroom. And, my parents never wired the house for cable or internet. My father still used dial-up to connect to the Internet. The house sat on the market for quite some time, until a couple with children bought it, making it clear that it was a tear-down. So, as the Boomers do sell houses due to death, declining health, and other reasons, a large portion of that housing stock won't have 21st Century ammenities.

This makes zero sense. My boomer parents died recently, and it’s been a freaking nightmare trying to sell the two perfectly good houses they owned - both the big, two story, 4 bedroom one and the small one they had just bought to move into months before they died.