While I absolutely believe it's a thing for someone. It's not a thing for anyone I know.
Two factors there.
People live longer. An then parents die (70+), they kids ( avg. 2) are at the age of 55+. At that point they housing situation is figured out. Also if ( big if in Canada) house was paid off you inherit half of it ( unless you are single kid which was rare 50+ years ago in Canada).
However in Canada what I see is that houses were reverse-mortgaged to supply income on pension and/or live in a retirement home, and thus my friends got trivial inheritances in a tune of tens thousands of CAD dollars after estate liquidation.
That's exactly what I mean when I say people end up with two homes. In fact, if the home was given to children not owning their home, we would still be in the wealth illusion situation.
> However in Canada what I see is that houses were reverse-mortgaged to supply income on pension and/or live in a retirement home, and thus my friends got trivial inheritances in a tune of tens thousands of CAD dollars after estate liquidation.
This is not something we see a lot in my country (France) because so far we had decent pensions… But obviously situations vary a lot between countries.
It is mostly, since your purchasing power doesn't increase because all house prices rise.
But: people don't live forever, and when your home-owning parents die, you now have two homes instead of one, and you'll get much more than if housing price was half the price. Same when your in-laws die too.
Obviously this is entirely unsustainable and is a huge driver for the political despair that is spreading in Western countries.