Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. Are boomers grandfathered in to low taxes and insurance or something? How on earth could they pay so much lower than the rest of us with similar houses?

When it comes to property taxes, many states (eg, California) and local jurisdictions (eg, DC and thousands of other cities & counties) cap property taxes from appreciating for long time home owners. So if you own your home for a long time, you will pay only a fraction in property taxes of what newer home owners will pay. This is especially true in areas that have seen rapid price appreciation in recent years.

It’s massively market-distorting and keeps older residents in their big homes because they don’t want to pay more in taxes. California tried to alleviate this by allowing older residents to sell their home and apply the original discounted property tax rate to a new property….its had mixed results. But even in California, you have houses in Malibu that are worth $10m but they pay the original property tax on the $300K value when they purchased the property in 1980. So maybe they pay $10K per year in property taxes while their next door neighbor pays $100K/year.

There’s variations of these tax distortions all over the US. Now apply this to vacation homes and investment properties, plus zoning restrictions….it puts younger buyers at a massive disadvantage.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s because we have stupid “age in place” incentives, which aren’t good public policy.

Being older isn’t an excuse not to pay your share of property taxes (some locales lock taxes in place based on age).

Keeping older people in giant SFHs (which are a finite resource in areas near job centers) is terrible public policy. It’s not environmentally friendly to have one or two people using all these utilities. And as in the case of my aging MIL who refuses to move, it leads to a lot of family stress from falling down the stairs (already had one hospital stay and she continues to go downhill as her giant home falls into disrepair).

Everyone likes to tell younger people you don’t always get what you want, but why can’t we say the same to older people? We as a society shouldn’t have to subsidize them through low property taxes just because they want to sit in their wealth without tapping into equity to pay taxes or move. We shouldn’t be giving tax credits so they can modify their homes to make them adapted to the elderly.

If you want to stay in your big house as you get old then you need to be able to pay for it yourself (taxes, modifications, and all). It’s so hypocritical to tell younger people that if they want something they have to save/pay for it themselves, but then also expect society to help them afford what they want.

I agree, with one caveat. Everyone should absolutely pay their fair share in taxes. But on the other hand, it's understandable that older people who have lived in a house for their whole lives resent having to move. Rather than subsidies, or locking low rates/assessments in place, we should have a program where senior citizens can defer some or all of their taxes until either they move or sell the property, whichever comes first. When that happens, the back taxes become due, along with some reasonable interest.

So no, a senior citizen isn't forces out of their home because they can't afford the taxes. But neither are they absolved from paying what they owe forever.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. Are boomers grandfathered in to low taxes and insurance or something? How on earth could they pay so much lower than the rest of us with similar houses?

When it comes to property taxes, many states (eg, California) and local jurisdictions (eg, DC and thousands of other cities & counties) cap property taxes from appreciating for long time home owners. So if you own your home for a long time, you will pay only a fraction in property taxes of what newer home owners will pay. This is especially true in areas that have seen rapid price appreciation in recent years.

It’s massively market-distorting and keeps older residents in their big homes because they don’t want to pay more in taxes. California tried to alleviate this by allowing older residents to sell their home and apply the original discounted property tax rate to a new property….its had mixed results. But even in California, you have houses in Malibu that are worth $10m but they pay the original property tax on the $300K value when they purchased the property in 1980. So maybe they pay $10K per year in property taxes while their next door neighbor pays $100K/year.

There’s variations of these tax distortions all over the US. Now apply this to vacation homes and investment properties, plus zoning restrictions….it puts younger buyers at a massive disadvantage.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was in Texas recently. Lots of new construction homes being built.

The irony of red states generally having less restrictive zoning.

https://www.newsweek.com/blue-states-housing-market-crisis-1877226

Texas is big and flat. Very easy to build. California has challenging geography - the only empty places left to build are mountainous and/or prone to wild fire risks or very inhospitable. California needs to build upward to compensate, yet nimby’s fight anything that isn’t a SFH or townhouse.

The last time we had a “New Deal for Housing” was post WW2 when the GIs came back and had no houses for their wives and kids. They had to live with aging parents. We will need another similarly dire situation in order to bulldoze over NIMBY protests to upzoning

That’s a cop out for CA and the Northeast. Texas is building more density than any other state. The runners up are in the south and intermountain west.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop your whining and get a therapist to help you deal with your very transparent issues with your parents.

NP. My parents aren’t Boomers but I legitimately don’t see how people don’t understand why Millrennials/Gen Z/Gen Alpha feel enraged that no matter how hard they work they will never have the ability to build wealth the way previous generations did.

Who do you think is going to inherit the houses and 401k balances of boomers?

Real answer: private equity and asset management firms that own housing vulture funds, nursing homes, hospital networks, and physician practices.

Yeah, people who discount this don't understand how it works. And the PP who mentioned that many Boomers amassed small fortunes with no or little skill is right, which is one reason Boomers are so susceptible to this-- many have no clue how to protect their money from being gobbled up by elder and end-of-life care.

Also, don't laugh, but scammers are a genuine concern. They are getting more aggressive and clever, there are more of them, and they know Boomers are sitting on piles of cash. I know of two Boomer men who recently got scammed out of thousands this way. It could have been a lot more.

And to be fair, what is the special skill that the younger generations have? They can make a mean pivot table and slide deck? Most people aren't sitting at the top in a leadership position, they are sitting somewhere in the middle bored and daydreaming.

Also some of the jobs boomers have had successfully - nurses, teachers, etc, we still need desperately today. Are you knocking those positions? Are you being condescending to people who work low wage jobs?

The irony is that you just proved our point: there are Boomers who have amassed small fortunes by having a career as a teacher, nurse, firefighter, low wages jobs, etc. They were able to buy property near job centers, had low cost for education (teacher or nurse), maybe a pension, decent 401K match.

Not at all possible today for similar jobs held by Millennials or Gen Z to amass significant assets as Boomers who held the same professions. This is the story!

Actually, the irony is that you didn't realize you were replying to an RN. I work in a DC hospital with plentiful RNs and other healthcare workers who live and own in DC area, suburbs and exurbs. Generally, no nurse or teacher was affording the super fancy real estate even in the 50s, people bought where they could and over time those areas became more desirable. You have to be willing to live where you can afford rather than think you are entitled to the best of the best.

Anonymous wrote:It’s because we have stupid “age in place” incentives, which aren’t good public policy.

Being older isn’t an excuse not to pay your share of property taxes (some locales lock taxes in place based on age).

Keeping older people in giant SFHs (which are a finite resource in areas near job centers) is terrible public policy. It’s not environmentally friendly to have one or two people using all these utilities. And as in the case of my aging MIL who refuses to move, it leads to a lot of family stress from falling down the stairs (already had one hospital stay and she continues to go downhill as her giant home falls into disrepair).

Everyone likes to tell younger people you don’t always get what you want, but why can’t we say the same to older people? We as a society shouldn’t have to subsidize them through low property taxes just because they want to sit in their wealth without tapping into equity to pay taxes or move. We shouldn’t be giving tax credits so they can modify their homes to make them adapted to the elderly.

If you want to stay in your big house as you get old then you need to be able to pay for it yourself (taxes, modifications, and all). It’s so hypocritical to tell younger people that if they want something they have to save/pay for it themselves, but then also expect society to help them afford what they want.

Anonymous wrote:It’s because we have stupid “age in place” incentives, which aren’t good public policy.

Being older isn’t an excuse not to pay your share of property taxes (some locales lock taxes in place based on age).

Keeping older people in giant SFHs (which are a finite resource in areas near job centers) is terrible public policy. It’s not environmentally friendly to have one or two people using all these utilities. And as in the case of my aging MIL who refuses to move, it leads to a lot of family stress from falling down the stairs (already had one hospital stay and she continues to go downhill as her giant home falls into disrepair).

Everyone likes to tell younger people you don’t always get what you want, but why can’t we say the same to older people? We as a society shouldn’t have to subsidize them through low property taxes just because they want to sit in their wealth without tapping into equity to pay taxes or move. We shouldn’t be giving tax credits so they can modify their homes to make them adapted to the elderly.

If you want to stay in your big house as you get old then you need to be able to pay for it yourself (taxes, modifications, and all). It’s so hypocritical to tell younger people that if they want something they have to save/pay for it themselves, but then also expect society to help them afford what they want.

Anonymous wrote:It’s because we have stupid “age in place” incentives, which aren’t good public policy.

Being older isn’t an excuse not to pay your share of property taxes (some locales lock taxes in place based on age).

Keeping older people in giant SFHs (which are a finite resource in areas near job centers) is terrible public policy. It’s not environmentally friendly to have one or two people using all these utilities. And as in the case of my aging MIL who refuses to move, it leads to a lot of family stress from falling down the stairs (already had one hospital stay and she continues to go downhill as her giant home falls into disrepair).

Everyone likes to tell younger people you don’t always get what you want, but why can’t we say the same to older people? We as a society shouldn’t have to subsidize them through low property taxes just because they want to sit in their wealth without tapping into equity to pay taxes or move. We shouldn’t be giving tax credits so they can modify their homes to make them adapted to the elderly.

If you want to stay in your big house as you get old then you need to be able to pay for it yourself (taxes, modifications, and all). It’s so hypocritical to tell younger people that if they want something they have to save/pay for it themselves, but then also expect society to help them afford what they want.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop your whining and get a therapist to help you deal with your very transparent issues with your parents.

NP. My parents aren’t Boomers but I legitimately don’t see how people don’t understand why Millrennials/Gen Z/Gen Alpha feel enraged that no matter how hard they work they will never have the ability to build wealth the way previous generations did.

Who do you think is going to inherit the houses and 401k balances of boomers?

Real answer: private equity and asset management firms that own housing vulture funds, nursing homes, hospital networks, and physician practices.

Yeah, people who discount this don't understand how it works. And the PP who mentioned that many Boomers amassed small fortunes with no or little skill is right, which is one reason Boomers are so susceptible to this-- many have no clue how to protect their money from being gobbled up by elder and end-of-life care.

Also, don't laugh, but scammers are a genuine concern. They are getting more aggressive and clever, there are more of them, and they know Boomers are sitting on piles of cash. I know of two Boomer men who recently got scammed out of thousands this way. It could have been a lot more.

And to be fair, what is the special skill that the younger generations have? They can make a mean pivot table and slide deck? Most people aren't sitting at the top in a leadership position, they are sitting somewhere in the middle bored and daydreaming.

Also some of the jobs boomers have had successfully - nurses, teachers, etc, we still need desperately today. Are you knocking those positions? Are you being condescending to people who work low wage jobs?

The irony is that you just proved our point: there are Boomers who have amassed small fortunes by having a career as a teacher, nurse, firefighter, low wages jobs, etc. They were able to buy property near job centers, had low cost for education (teacher or nurse), maybe a pension, decent 401K match.

Not at all possible today for similar jobs held by Millennials or Gen Z to amass significant assets as Boomers who held the same professions. This is the story!

Actually, the irony is that you didn't realize you were replying to an RN. I work in a DC hospital with plentiful RNs and other healthcare workers who live and own in DC area, suburbs and exurbs. Generally, no nurse or teacher was affording the super fancy real estate even in the 50s, people bought where they could and over time those areas became more desirable. You have to be willing to live where you can afford rather than think you are entitled to the best of the best.

Anonymous wrote:Boomers bought trade up homes in middle age so mortgages will go to their 70s and 80s

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop your whining and get a therapist to help you deal with your very transparent issues with your parents.

NP. My parents aren’t Boomers but I legitimately don’t see how people don’t understand why Millrennials/Gen Z/Gen Alpha feel enraged that no matter how hard they work they will never have the ability to build wealth the way previous generations did.

Who do you think is going to inherit the houses and 401k balances of boomers?

The elder care industry.

Some, but not all of it. In the next decade or two, we’re going to see an inheritance windfall like never before. It’s not like the past where retirement was tied up in pensions and Social Security. Boomers and GenX are sitting on trillions in retirement savings, living off the interest. They can’t possibly spend the principle in their lifetimes.

So here's an idea Millennials/Gen Z/Gen Alpha: use ur technology skills to build better platforms to deliver those elder care services. U know...sort of like being the Amazon for elder care service delivery. Just beats whining about that job. Be the change u want to see.
The price for in-home elder care is easily going to hit $150-200/hour in the next 15 years. We will have soooooo many Boomers who will need care but will have a shortage of facilities, doctors, nurses, and home health aides. Medicare and Medicaid will likely only cover a small fraction of the actual market-based costs. Lots of practitioners will stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid except absolute bottom-of-the-barrel crap.

The massive “inheritance windfall” will only be among a relatively small cohort of ultra-high net worth white families.