That's fine if they refuse to sell, but as the article points out, there's an enormous demand for homes.
Several of the people mentioned in the article own more than one property and are entirely unwilling to sell.
Several of the people mentioned in the article own more than one property and are entirely unwilling to sell.
"Property-tax exemptions for longtime residents keep older Americans from moving. Zoning rules make it harder to build affordable apartments attractive to senior citizens."
Ex: "Under the almost-40-year-old ballot measure Proposition 13, they are tied to the property’s value when the house was purchased in the 1970s."
It's debatable if they should be pushed out of their homes due to property taxes but probably needs to be balanced with the impact on the overall market and availability of housing.
There is no reason to sell unless you need cash for something else (startup, for example).
What would you do with cash after selling those extra 5 houses? Put it into stock market? Right now when it's mega inflated from cheap money? Too risky, safer to keep those houses.
"If you gave me a bag of money, I wouldn't sell" shouldn't be taken literally. If you offered 10 million dollars for 1 million dollar property I'm sure many of those baby boomers would sell.
The context seems to imply something deeper than that, a complete non-interest in selling:
> “Give me $2 million,” the homeowner replies. “I don’t want no low number.”
> It turns out the price is for the whole block. Even then, the potential seller has second thoughts.
> “I wouldn’t sell even if you gave me $2 million — this is my retirement,” he says. “If you gave me a bag of money, I wouldn’t sell.”
Then surely he'd've said so - he could've said "no, 3 million". Instead he says his price is 2 million, then decides he wouldn't sell even for that. There's something else going on there.
There's nothing wrong with that. In free market you are free not to sell your property even if somebody offers you 100x it's market value. Nobody can force you to sell if you want to keep it.
And besides the millennial guy from the article couldn't afford $2 million anyways (he wants to spend 200k) so that question was pointless anyways because even if the old person said yes he doesn't have the cash.
The only thing they'd want to do with it is give it to their children, but they'll inherit the property when they die regardless, so selling is just a hassle.