I think it has more to do w/ Boomers working/living longer than previous generations. If youre 60, still working and your house is paid off, why are you going to sacrifice part of your retirement nest egg (profit from house sale) to downsize while you can still afford it? My in-laws live in a house they bought in 1995 for $200,000. Its now worth a bout $550,000. My father in law is retired and my mother in law still works. They still have a mortgage but its totally manageable for now on their income. Yeah theres maintenance on the house but theyre able to still handle it and they live in a great neighborhood. Wife and I also live in the neighborhood so they want to stick around for when we have kids. At some point, they will likely downsize to a condo or something, but for now the housing market is still booming in our area and they have incentive to stay so they arent going anywhere.
Housing is still going bonkers on Long Island with plenty of young people buying houses. The floor for houses in nice neighborhoods here is past $400,000 at this point so its dual income professionals or rich single income families doing the buying, but houses dont last more than a week around us if theyre priced correctly. We were really lucky and got in just under the gun last April and were able to buy a house right on the limit of what we could afford. At this point our house would sell for probably $50,000 more than we paid for it and thats w/ less than $10,000 worth of work put into it. Most of my friends have purchased homes in the past few years around other parts of the east coast as well. Its taken longer than previous generations, but I think this coming decade youre going to see a lot of millenials become home owners as more boomers get out of the job market and open up new slots for higher paying jobs.