Nearly 14 million homes owned by baby boomers and members of the Silent Generation are expected to come onto the U.S. housing market over the next decade, according to a new analysis from Realtor.com. But the report finds that shift will do little to ease the nation’s shortage of affordable starter homes.
The analysis found that 13.9 million homes currently owned and occupied by baby boomers and Silent Generation households are likely to be released to the market between 2026 and 2036. That marks a 33.7% increase, or 3.5 million additional homes, compared with the previous decade’s pace of turnover among older households. It is also a 74% increase, or 5.9 million more homes, than what those same generations released during the prior ten-year period.
The Silent Generation includes people born between 1928 and 1945, while baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964.
Despite the scale of the coming turnover, the report found it will have only a limited effect on the supply of starter homes — those with two bedrooms or fewer. Homeowners in that category tend to hold onto their properties longer, and the analysis projects just 0.38 million such homes will be released over the next ten years.
Larger homes are expected to see a bigger impact from the generational shift, both because there are more of them and because many will be vacated as older owners move in with family members, transition into care facilities, or pass away — rather than being traded up from, as happens with younger buyers moving to larger properties.
The findings underscore a persistent challenge for first-time buyers: even as a historic volume of housing changes hands over the coming decade, the smaller, lower-cost homes many young families are searching for are unlikely to become significantly more available.
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