Data shows Bay Area boomers aren’t giving up their big homes
Baby boomers own a bigger chunk of the Bay Area’s large homes than any other generation, often deciding to stay in their three-bedroom houses even after their children move out.
Baby boomers owned roughly 37% of the San Francisco metropolitan area’s stock of large homes — those with at least three bedrooms — in 2022. That’s according to an analysis of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data by real estate brokerage site Redfin. The analysis defined baby boomers as people ages 58 to 76 in 2022 — those born from 1946 to 1964.
That generation made up 20% of the San Francisco metro area’s population in 2022, Census Bureau data shows. Millennials ages 26 to 41, who represented 25% of the region’s population, owned just 18% of large homes.
More than half of the San Francisco metro area’s baby boomer households owned a big home, Redfin’s data indicates. Most of those were “empty nesters,” households composed of one or two adults and no minors. Roughly 38% of baby boomers fell into this group, while roughly 10% of millennial households owned a large home with no children.
It was more common for millennials with large homes to have children living with them. About 16% of millennials fell into this group, as well as 27% of Generation X, or people ages 42 to 57.
About 14% of baby boomer households had three or more adults in a large home. These households are mostly adult children living with their parents, Redfin said in its report.
Roughly half of baby boomer and Gen X households didn’t own large homes, either renting their properties or owning smaller ones. The same was true for nearly threequarters of millennials.
The generation with the smallest share of large homes in the San Francisco metro area was Generation Z, people ages 19 to 25 in 2022. Only about 4% of Gen Z households owned a home with at least three bedrooms, representing less than 1% of the region’s stock of large homes.
Baby boomers generally don’t have much reason to sell their homes, Redfin explained in its report. Even those who haven’t paid off their mortgage are usually paying a much lower rate than they would if they sold their current home and bought another one. That’s especially true in California, where property tax increases are tethered to the home’s value at the time of purchase, which incentivizes longtime homeowners to stay put.
Meanwhile, many millennials are struggling to afford homes, despite recent gains in the generation’s homeownership rate. Unlike baby boomers, who Redfin said rode a wave of housing construction and a flourishing economy to build wealth, millennials have struggled through national financial crises while housing costs have surged.
Eventually, baby boomers’ homes will return to the market in large numbers after their owners die, downgrade or move to nursing facilities.
But that alone likely won’t be enough to drastically bring prices down, a recent report from Business Insider said, especially as more of Gen Z competes with millennials for housing.