Will baby boomers kill the housing market?

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Will a flood of baby boomers cashing out their home equity be too much for the housing market to bear? That is the question I was asked recently.

One of the difficulties in trying to make personal decisions, like whether to buy a house today in the town of your choice, based on long-term, national forecasts (for example, boomers cashing in their housing chips) is the risk of missing out on a lot of known positives – i.e., home ownership – in fear of unknown possible negatives.

But let’s look at some of those big questions. See also 4 reasons home prices will keep going up . (more…)

Buy or rent? It’s NOT just a financial decision

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OK, be warned, I am about to get on my soapbox.

Below I post a link to a recent Boston Herald article quoting a Zillow study comparing the costs of buying vs renting in different cities in the US and in different neighborhoods around Boston and Cambridge.

It’s not that I do no think article like this have some value. They do, encouraging people to think about how long they will stay in a house before making a major financial decision.

No, my problem with articles such as this is that they focus only on the financial aspect of buying a home. (more…)