Houses at this point are owned by Boomers, some Gen Xers, and the richest subset of Millenials.
But this is quite an unstable situation. Everyone needs somewhere to live, but vanishingly small parts of the population need two places. As the Boomers either die or move to retirement homes they will need to liquidate their real estate in massive numbers, largely all at once thanks to the tight clustering of the Boomers.
There’s simply no way that this glut of housing will be absorbed by the richest groups of Millenials without sudden and deep price shocks, especially since Boomers appear to prefer suburban homes that the childless Millenials don’t typically want.
What’s interesting to me is what will happen politically. Boomer house owners have been very adept at using local politics to prop up their property values, the only notable failure was 2008. What kind of bailout will they ask for when their home is worth 1/5 what they expected?
Now, I see the market at a peak again and I'm not going _anywhere near_ this thing. I also contemplate whether I will ever afford a family sized place in a nice location. I am not sure but I wonder if I may have missed the boat on this.
I don't see a social adjustment to housing happening in my lifetime so at this point I'm just hoping that a major downturn happens during a time I'm not having a startup fail but instead on a rise from time off consulting or a successful company.
I wouldn't give up what I've done to have worked corporate for the past decade, but I'm also completely beholden to macro trends in housing with timing that feels completely like luck to me.