Once baby boomers start selling their houses, the Swiss real estate market could face a serious shake-up, says a demographer in Basel. In the United States, a so-called “silver tsunami” is also expected. Could this mean the younger generation will finally see a drop in house prices?
by BezugssystemCH1903
29 comments
I took the second title because the first one is too Claickbity with:
>”How retiring baby boomers could crash Swiss property market”
No. Just no. that’s a pipe dream.
The fundamental issue is still there. Lack of enough housing. That won’t be solved with this.
No because it’s not that they’ll sell all at the same time and Investment Funds, Russian Oligarchs and such will keep buying them
No crash in Switzerland.
As the population is increasing. As simple as that.
Does anyone, except boomers, believe this nonsense?
Housing demand = population.
Population grows -> housing demand grows.
Surprise surprise, our population is growing through migration.
So no, baby boomers won‘t change a thing. Unless people start building faster than the population increases, then the housing market will come down.
Rich foreigners and corporations will just buy them…
Corporations will buy the houses before they get cheap enough for us.
And then they’ll get even more expensive.
I think not in Zürich. But maybe the smaller cities and definitely the countryside.
Retired, ex and I just sold our single family home … to a younger Swiss couple. No oligarchs, no Russians, no hedge funds. Swiss to Swiss transaction. So there’s that.
Boomers are going to grace us with a double final f*you:
* They’ll burn all their cash in eldercare costs
* When cash is gone they’ll sell their houses to PE funds
No inheritance for the children of boomers
No.
Boomers won’t die without spending every single penny they made or inherited from their parents and grandparents. If they must, they’ll take a reverse mortgage and/or sell to some bank before dying so they can “enjoy their last good years”.
Once the stock of housing is in corporate hands (whether local or foreign, as in China or the US) cartelization will be much easier and you won’t see a dip in pricing every again
Once they start selling their houses, their will be large cash amounts available to their kids.
If they sell a house at 2M CHF, and they have two kids, they might have 1M for each to help for down payment, if the kid bring half of that, then we have two families on the market ready to buy 2.5M CHF homes (1M mortgage, or even 3M with 1.5M mortgage).
The prices will go down if most of them decide to not help their kids to acquire a house.
Nonsense based on wrong assumptions.
Such as thinking that immigration won’t stay strong (despite European immigration, refugees and economic migrants from a nearby continent which will triple in size this century).
Thinking that boomers will sell no matter what and crash prices instead of holding on to it longer or passing it on to children.
Using an American (!) academic to discuss suburbs/city living behavior. As if that was even remotely comparable to America which is so much larger, has worse public transportation and a completely different mentality. Ridiculous article
No offense. And excuse my French.
But that is not going to happen in a million years. These houses will be bought up or just go to inheritance. Nothing will change. We don’t have enough houses for our population, it is an artificially created problem, no zoning allowed to build.
We have more people migrating here and housing and infrastructure is not keeping up.
Unless population/ immigration growth is managed to align with our infrastructure, this problem will just get worse.
Good luck and have fun renting forever. Because nobody can afford 2M CHF houses.
Many will simply pass them on to their children
lol no.
No, cos banks and property companies will buy them and their value is dictated by rent prices and finances will be leveraged against that value.
So it’s in their interests to leave rents and prices high, even if rent demand drops due to prices.
Laws need to be passed to prohibit consolidation of property amongst corporations and banks otherwise we’ll slowly drift towards a permission economy.
🤣🤣 ah yes, the famous housing crash… It’s happening any time now.. 🤦♂️
Nobody would believe that prices would go down by any serius amount.
why would they sell them instead of giving it as inheritance?
They only sell within family. This demograper has no clue.
lol no.
Whatever houses will get sold often will never end up on the market. Large real estate companies will make sure to sweep them up at prohibitive prices just to rent them back to us and bleed us dry of our cash.
I’m in the US living next door to a boomer. They’ve been in their house since it was built in 84’. They will in all likelihood die there before moving.
This will only be true for the peripheral villages/mountains/ populated by old people and where nobody wants to go live (no work/no communities etc). Particularly working force migrants will not move in remote valleys.
This demographic movement has been true for 120 years (just look at some valleys in Ticino/Grisons/Wallis/ Berner Oberland) but this will be getting worse when baby boomer generation dies. Entire villages will empty out and real estate there will be incredibly affordable.
Since we cannot build fast enough, we should try to make a living from a remote village possible. One way is to improve good and robust internet connectivity and help/support fully remote work, or with only minimal trips to the office needed.
I meet people that are able to do so more and more; for instance a tessiner couple with kids can go back to Ticino while still working for the confederation in Berne, with only a couple of days of office per month.
This could alleviate pressure in cities and help keep villages in the outskirts alive.
This has already happened in the US.
My parents have been trying to sell their house for 5 years now. They bought for $400,000 in 2003 and is now worth double that but nobody is buying houses at that price with rates being stupid high.
To give perspective, my parents rate is 2.3, mine is 4.71 (bought right before it skyrocketed). My friend just closed on his house last year. His rate is 7%!
Dream on
Lmao
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