Yeah, I was just going to say -- look at places like Greece. The home ownership rate is about ~75%. It's pretty common for people to own multiple homes, too.

The average Greek person is not wealthy, but the value of these homes is not insignificant either. Mostly, Greek people live like they're poor, even though -- in theory -- their real estate holdings are worth a small fortune.

I met a Greek lady with 4 houses, one of which was on a super desirable island now -- worth well over $2.5M. She can only afford to visit the island once a year for a week, but she refuses to sell the house. Not because she's speculating on the value continuing to increase. Just purely for sentiment.

People are strangely attached to homes. And also (most) people see homes as good investments. Recent history is really working as confirmation biases for that. But long-term, objectively, housing has been an okay investment.

I just can't see all that collapsing because of a little downward pressure. Especially when it DEFINITELY hasn't happened in most aging countries.

One could argue that it has happened in Japan. But Japan's real estate boom in the 90s was truly unbelievable.

So it's really hard to say if house prices have gone down in real terms -- or if they were just so ridiculously insane in the 90s that it had a long-lasting anchor effect on prices ever since.

But then you have a flat in the city, and a big house in the country that at best gets used at the weekends. But then you have upkeep of 2 houses so you're not really that well off, despite having a mansion in the country.

Or the kids realise this, sell the homes, and you still have the downward pressure on prices. (probably more so, as they'll want a quick sale)

In theory yes. My anecdotes are not data, but I am seeing a bit of this now as I am seeing grandparents pass. The common theme is that the houses haven't so much as a coat of paint in 20 years, they are outdated and not in great condition. This is assuming they stayed in the same neighborhoods where the kids were raised. There is a whole other level of undesirability when they bought a condo in Florida (or wherever).

The kids generally have houses, they don't need/want an extra house. Usually there are multiple kids involved, so unless it is distinctly given to one child, it becomes problematic to do anything other than just turn it into a liquid asset and split the proceeds.

This may vary by region, but at least in the Northeast, property taxes are very expensive. Keeping a house around as a spare is just too big of a burden. In the age of AirBnb, there may be some other options.

In all cases I have seen thus far amongst family/friends, the house gets sold.

It's an interesting question, but I'm not sure this is the constant trend.

I just looked up home ownership rates by age group: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

The only group that doesn't seem to have declined in the last 15 years is 65 and over.

This is where I think the large size of the US and the tons of domestic migration won't really make inheriting a home as common as you would find in most of the world.

Anecdotally, I know nobody that I went to high school with that is remotely close to our home town - we all left. This is roughly 50 people, and I'm sure that all of them, like me, would not think twice about selling any property inherited from parents.

But what are the kids going to do with it if they already have some place to live but sell it?