bostonbubble.com

[balor123]

Aging Baby Boomers and the Generational Housing Bubble: Foresight and Mitigation of an Epic Transition

Don't have time to read the whole thing right now but looks good. I particularly like the in depth discussion of inter-generational issues and the large amount of data shown.

[john p]

Check this out though:

http://www.migrationinformation.com/DataTools/graphs/pyramid_1.shtml

The Babyboom had kids, and those kids are the "Echo-Boom". Add to them the surcharge of Immigrants and it is not that far off from being balanced. The diaspora of retirees might also get delayed as people are forced to work longer (especially in careers that aren't as physically demanding..).

http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back102.gif

[balor123]

Qualitatively, your argument seems reasonable but the numbers you referenced to still shows a significant shortage of buyers. Immigration could make up for it but only if it increases over where it has been over the last 3 decades (already factored into these numbers), which seems unlikely for a number of reasons. First, the conditions of many emerging markets are improving and many of them are now returning home. Second, US unemployment is high and expected to be so for a while, which discourages people from wanting to come here (that graph stops at 2007) and discourages voters from supporting high immigration. Workers will work longer but only if they can find/keep jobs and are physically able to. Even for jobs which aren't physically demanding, there's a good reason for retirement - your health starts to suck. I don't think the vast majority of them will be able to work much past 70 years old.

[GenXer]

Somebody is making predictions based on past/current data. I'd like to see how close these end up to reality. I wouldn't trust anybody making such long-term predictions. And I trust even less somebody who's making accuracy assumptions by providing no uncertainty in their numbers. I wouldn't necessarily trust these results however plausible they may be.

[admin]

I came across this post from 2010 again today because a spam-bot / spammer posted in this thread (now deleted). The original link is now defunct. However, I found another copy of the paper here:

http://www.scag.ca.gov/housing/pdfs/trends/agingbabyboomers_ghb.pdf

I actually read it all the way through this time too. Very interesting read. The authors do note that the effects of the generational shift could easily take two decades to play out, so I'm not going to hold out for 2015 in the hope of a sudden price drop. However, they note six other states that are ahead of Massachusetts in the timing of the shift by about 5 years, three of which are in the Northeast too (CT, NY, and PA). I think it would be interesting to keep an eye on those states as a leading indicator for MA, with respect to the impact of the projected demographic shift.

- admin

[balor123]

Funny to see my old post revived. There's still time for this to play out! I'd love to see an update to the data, though I could have sworn the range was 2020 - 2030 from memory. Boomers can only hold out for so long before their estates start acting for them. Still, there's too many variables to know what the outcome will be.

[admin]

Maybe you mentally added on some years to their time frame. They did project that the threshold crossing would begin in Massachusetts by 2015 but also stated that it could easily take two decades for the bulk of the effect to play out.

- admin

[balor123]

That's probably it. I did a lot of research back then - may have seen some data elsewhere as well. I came across a topical post on the Austin city-data forums recently: