Quote:
Originally Posted by monkey brewery
Are seniors downsizing going to put even more pressure on younger, first time home buyers? I've been thinking about this recently.
Up until about last year we've talked about eventually downsizing (we're 60's), and central to these plans are moving into a condo or something a little easier to manage as we get older, and/or a place we'd feel comfortable leaving locked up while we head south. It's not a financial retirement issue per se.
in 2020-21 we were looking at condos for 250-350k on the low end and 500-600k for something a bigger. Today we're looking at 400k at the bottom. It's of course all relative to where you want to live and how you want to live, so your mileage will vary.
Today we're looking at what I would categorize as a first time buyer's condo. Another idea is an active senior living facility down the line (I for one would rather just go ahead and die at this point in my life, my wife thinks they'd be great for us).
This all has me thinking where do first time buyers go? As seniors start to sell-off, downsize, die-off and what have you, I think there's this expectation that the market will suddenly be flooded with all these prime houses in established areas. But what I don't hear a lot of commentary about is how those selling are going to put a lot of pressure on younger buyers, in all quadrants.
Our property tax assessment came in at an astonishing number, and houses in our neighborhood sell well above that even after interest rates cooled the market. It's frankly insane, and there's a reason there are hardly any kids in this neighborhood as it it. Who's going to be buying these houses? The next generation of seniors?
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Seniors having less housing space, generally, opens up more housing space for young people/families. Seniors downsizing is good for young people. Seniors holding onto excessively large homes with empty rooms is what's bad for everyone trying to buy in.
I suppose some markets have a vast shortage of entry level condos, but, from what I've seen, not Calgary. Calgary condos also seem like a really poor place to build equity. With interest rates higher and condos not really going up in price since basically the late 2000s, you would have been much better off investing the money elsewhere and renting. (See Vinny01's post 1 post up from yours.)