Aging Baby Boomers and Future Home Sales: Foresight of a Generational Housing Bubble

Dowell Myers, University of Southern California
John Pitkin, Analysis and Forecasting, Inc.

The Baby Boom generation has dominated the housing market throughout its adult career, and its anticipated entry into elderly years could lead to epic change. The 67% increase in the ratio of seniors to working age population projected in the next two decades will give disproportionate weight to seniors who will be massive home sellers, leading to the notion of a generational housing bubble. Conventional analyses emphasize net changes in the number of homeowners. Instead, a method is proposed for estimating the average rates of entering and exiting homeownership by age group in the 50 states. Distinctive profiles emerge and these rates are applied to population projections for each state to estimate when an excess of home selling will appear in each state. These findings of gross sales are compared to the findings of net changes in number of homeowners, and conclusions are drawn about the generational bubble.