Boomers are rattling around in their 5,000 sq ft McMansions, eventually planning to downsize into something smaller. That assumes someone will want to buy their ostentatious, high maintenance homes so they can trade down into something cheaper in an walkable suburb or urban area. However, these are precisely the types of homes millennials want too. More and more no one really wants a behemoth McMansion that, as McMansion Hell is fond of saying, was probably built using crappy materials and cheap labor, so things will wear out quickly. McMansions often have multiple, complex roofs because it looks so grand and important, except when you need to replace it, then you’re talking $30,000-40,000. Oh, that.
McMansions will need to be repurposed. Perhaps they could be used as communal living locations, or marijuana grow houses?
Younger and older generations alike are gravitating toward smaller dwellings in more urban, walkable suburbs and cities, with restaurants and coffee shops around the corner. It’s leading to a real estate traffic jam: Increasingly, boomers are getting stuck, because most can’t buy the home of their dreams until they unload their current ones. And many millennials have neither the desire nor the means to help them out.
“What you have is everyone chasing the same type of home,” says Rick Palacios, director of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting. “More and more buyers of all ages want to avoid having to deal with a huge yard and all the upkeep and the costs to maintain [a larger] home.”