Boomers Face Off With First-Time Buyers for Smaller Homes

Older buyers looking to downsize are facing younger competition in a market where soaring prices for bigger homes are shifting buyer interest to smaller family homes.

A major housing shortage is leaving first-time buyers and older demographics with few options for small homes, particularly as a limited supply drives up prices for traditionally inexpensive properties with low square footage.

Soaring home prices and new construction favoring bigger builds have interrupted traditional patterns of homeownership for buyers across the country. Smaller houses, desired by aging seniors and young couples alike, are among the toughest to find. The supply of homes up to 1,400 square feet is near a five-decade low, according to data from Freddie Mac.

In 2020, about 28% of real-estate transactions could be characterized as downsizing, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. The majority of these transactions are made by buyers 55 or older.

“We have a housing shortage,” Mr. Yun said. “Clearly from the age patterns, young people want to upsize, and the older generation is looking to downsize, but not greatly—only 100 or 200 square feet smaller than where they’d been living.”

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