November 29, 2025 | Mark Luis Foster

It’s not surprising that my generation is deciding to “age in place,” causing a backlog in housing inventory. We blogged recently about the issue and the accompanying generational wealth  issue HERE. But a new study is showing that the great generational shift will soon be coming in the housing market.

There is now an estimated 40 million homes and some 31.1 million homeowners in the USA, which represents a homeownership rate of  78%, and that apparently is at-peak in the boomer generation. The boomers have paid down a lot on their mortgages, so many of us homeowners are aging in place during retirement years rather than fork over huge amounts to essentially start over and lose our high equity positions.

A new study by First American comes to this unsurprising conclusion about Boomers:

They will eventually relocate to smaller or care-oriented settings due to health, accessibility, and family proximity, and by 2060, natural attrition will have reduced their numbers to 1.5 million households. The next generation of buyers will benefit from a consistent supply of larger, strategically positioned houses as a result of that change.

And I thought everyone younger than me just wanted to rent.

Turns out the Gen X’ers, which are immediately after the boomer generation, are set to dominate the homeowner market. Again, not a rocket-science kind of conclusion but the numbers are interesting:

The “middle child” population, or Generation X, acts as the link. With about 35 million homes, Gen X is smaller than the baby boomer generation and will be in their prime earning years for the next 20 years. Gen Xers in their late careers and retirement are expected to drive the last stage of home ownership, contributing roughly 1.8 million new homeowner households and increasing their ownership percentage to 75% by 2040. The boomer-led supply wave continues until the mid-2040s and beyond as they transition from net buyers to net sellers, progressively releasing suburban home stock.

And what about those Millennials?

The largest adult generation, millennials, are firmly in their prime purchasing years. Their household count increases slightly as they turn their education and professional accomplishments into home ownership, from around 35.8 million in 2025 to approximately 39.6 million in the early 2050s, but the proportion of households that own a home increase significantly, and much more quickly. As the homeownership rate rises from 51 to 73%, an estimated 10.6 million more people will become homeowners. It is expected that housing demand will have a lengthy, consistent tailwind through the late 2050s before leveling out thanks to a moderate increase in households and a significant shift from renters to owners.

It would be interesting to see some data showing how these house-hungry generations may feel about HOAs. One might predict that they’d like the less maintenance and bulk billing advantage, but I have yet to see a solid behavioral study on that subject. With some 82% of homebuilding in America landing squarely in homeowner association structures, it would seem difficult for them to avoid.

In any case, First American published a chart to demonstrate the 35-year forecasted shift:

You can read the whole story HERE.