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Comment by perspective1 | Hacker News Reader

LOL. The article completely ignores that today's 40-somethings will be 60-something 20 years from now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...

edit: Seeing the flood of downvotes I'll give some data. Home ownership increases with age. 60+ers leaving their homes from death, poor health or inconvenience will be supplemented by today's 40+ers over the next 20 years. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership... . We were in the same situation 20 years ago, 21 years ago, 22 years ago, and so on.

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Does that somehow change how many current 60 year olds will be moving out of their house in the next twenty years? A demographic change isn't what's being discussed.

It’s very different. I’m fortunate to be in a good place from a retirement perspective, but at this point my parents had made a 10x return on their home that they purchased in late 70s NYC, plus a legacy pension, plus a retirement healthcare.

Most of the housing wealth will be eaten up by health costs. With families moving away and people retiring to alternate locales, property wealth will be seized and sold off by the county to pay for Medicaid.

Many of the folks in our field are doing great, but tech is boom/bust and people are making way too much money now.

> Most of the housing wealth will be eaten up by health costs

Unless the home is somehow stripped down or otherwise damaged, the intrinsic value of the housing wealth will not change; it just is owned by a different entity.

A 10x return on something bought in the 70s is very poor in comparison to the stock market which will double your money roughly every 7-10 years.

40 somethings are not baby boomers... boomers are in their late 50s to early 70s right now. [0]

The baby boom happened after world war II ended in 1945 which was 74 years ago.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

40-somethings are Gen-Xers. We've been raised on the idea of an unstoppable grim-meathook future. We don't want that, but we're powerless to stop it.

>the idea of an unstoppable grim-meathook future.

As a millennial... what does that mean?

I was skeptical at first, but you are right

Today, there are ~77 million Americans over 60. In 2040, there will be ~100 million Americans over 60.

The issue is not in 2040, it's between now and 2040. For example, the current population in the 40-45 age range is nearly 2 million less than the 55-59 range. So sometime between now and 2040 (probably around 2030) we are going to see a decrease in the number of newly retired individuals. By 2040, the first wave of millennials will start retiring, which should make the 'silver tsunami' less of an issue.

I agree there will be a small peak, but there is no cliff on the other side. 5 years is a pretty small range to look at 10 years you get the following:

There are 37.5 million folks in their 60s now. There will be 40 million folks in their 60s in 2030 there will be 39 million folks in their 60s in 2040.

The point is that there is a surge of baby-boomers who will die and the number of people younger than them are a significantly smaller group, so there will in fact be a surge in available housing.

I thought so as well, but it simply isn't true. Total number of folks in their 60s will continue to grow.

Today, there are ~77 million Americans over 60. In 2040, there will be ~100 million Americans over 60.

You can play with the numbers here. https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

"In 60s" and "over 60" are not the same thing. That's playing a little too fast and loose with the statistics for my taste.

Sorry for any confusion, I looked at the numbers both ways. As posted elsewhere:

There are 37.5 million folks in their 60s now.

There will be 40 million folks in their 60s in 2030.

There will be 39 million folks in their 60s in 2040.

This argument is missing the point - the questions is not how many people will be of age X in 2040.

It is about how many homes will be released due to owners passing away in 2020 vs 2040.

The very fact that there will be more older people in 2040 also contributes to getting more homes released.

What the statistics does not even consider is what happens if we manage to extend life, even by say 10 years. A completely different picture emerges where homes get even more expensive.

There are as many millennials as boomers, whereas gen X is about 10 million less than either group.

I’d like to know what they are going to do with all the old-folks homes that are going up.

There's a precedent for this: schools. A lot of towns had to build out to accommodate the boom, then deal with declining enrollment for GenX, then another increase for the "echo" generation that we now call millennials. If you want to know what retirement homes will go through, look at what schools already did.

The point is the flood of the market with these folks' homes.

If there's demand because of a new set of people come by them, that doesn't negate a rise in available properties from which they may select.

Real estate companies make money from the _churn_ of the market, not whether there are too many or too few houses to meet demand.

Why do demographics matter? It's completely missing the point. The only thing that matters is that the population is still growing and therefore there will be no housing shortage.

The us birth rate is at a 32 year low, less than 2 for nearly a decade.

Combining with an increasing middle age mortality rate via suicide, opiods, and obesity (including diabetes)

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723518379/u-s-births-fell-to-...

Meh, we can just increase the number of refugees we accept. Germany just did this.

But people who are 40 now have different priorities and tend to want to live in different places than 60 year olds did 20 years ago.

Nope. Everyone still wants to live in coastal Southern California.

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