patrick.net

If you intend to keep the home aka capital in the family, then your holding period is technically infinite. Of course, you can't control what your kids will do what you die, but nonetheless, it's sort of true. The implication is that via infinite holding period, the buy vs rent is clearly in favor of buying since it normally takes 5-7 years to break even vs comparable rental. Obviously this point of view does not apply to DINKs or to those who never plan to have kids.

2.5% interest is a myth. Where did you get that number from? Did anyone get that rate? From whom? I ran to the bank to be told; eeeeee, the thing is criteria bla bla bla. Endless stories. Give me a break!

Yeah I don't think most people will be getting 2.5% for purchase loans. MAYBE refinancing.

Could you be more specific pls?

zesta says

Your Center for Economic and Policy report was released in FEB 2009! A lot has changed in 3+ years, C/S is reporting 6 consecutive months of gains and underwater homeowners are trending downwards. That 3.5m in Dec 2011 is probably less now.

Nope. Not much has changed:
http://www.housingwire.com/news/monday-morning-cup-coffee-homeowners-over-50-fall-foreclosures

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says

Gay billionaire Chindians will 10x the price of townhouses in Stockton before Christmas and sell to aliens from outer space who shit solid gold. Boomers will all retire as billionaires and spend their golden years shooting at their grandchildren in Death from Above tours in gutted, hellish cities that would make Camden look like Monte Carlo.

Remind me again why your not on my ignore list. Nothing you say makes much sense, but it's occasionally funny.

My father-in-law keeps saying he's going to Will his house to us. A house we neither want or need. We can barely afford the Mortgage and taxes on the house we have, what do we need another for? Even a house owned free and clear still have taxes and other expenses associated with it, if it ever does end up in our possession, we will just sell it.

Dan8267 says

They won't. They'll leave them to their Millennial kids who will either move in or sell it to other Millennials are a much, much lower price. I guess that's the solution to the problem. Get rid of the generation that insists its houses are worth 10,000 times what they paid for it.

I like the way you think!

Goran_K says

zesta says

Your Center for Economic and Policy report was released in FEB 2009! A lot has changed in 3+ years, C/S is reporting 6 consecutive months of gains and underwater homeowners are trending downwards. That 3.5m in Dec 2011 is probably less now.

Nope. Not much has changed:

http://www.housingwire.com/news/monday-morning-cup-coffee-homeowners-over-50-fall-foreclosures

Wow, newsflash! More delinquencies and foreclosures in 2011 compared to 2007.

In case you haven't noticed we're in Dec 2012. Do you think there were more foreclosures of people over 50 in 2009 or 2012?

I think over the past 3 years, not much has changed to improve boomer situations. :)

They might not want to sell but it might depend as to how large their bills are and in particular medical bills. Medicare does not pay for everything and social security is not an investment vehicle.

You also have to wonder how much in the way of larger items might be sold off. Boats, 2nd or 3rd cars, motorcycles. Perhaps reminiscent of larger/encompassing hobbies. Coin/comic/stamp collections, collected artwork, higher end audio vision (hello dirt cheap Tivoli!) Certainly some might be donated to libraries (books, music, video) or museums (art or anything historic) but there is only so much to go around.