Senior Housing Wealth Reaches a Record: $7.14 Trillion
The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association is reporting that homeowners 62 and older saw their housing wealth grow by 2.7 percent or $104 billion in the first quarter. That brings this demographic’s housing wealth to a record $7.14 trillion from Q4 2018, the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association reported in its quarterly release of the NRMLA/RiskSpan Reverse Mortgage Market Index.
The increase in senior homeowners’ wealth was mainly driven by an estimated 2.4 percent or $110 billion increase in senior home values, including an estimated increase of 0.8 percent in the senior home-owning population, offset by a 1.1 percent or $6.5 billion increase of senior-held mortgage debt.
Although this is welcome news for the reverse mortgage industry, it’s also of importance for real estate professionals, many of whom are involved in helping seniors downsize.
It’s been a frequent observation that there’s a mismatch of housing inventory, with large, luxury homes languishing on the market, while starter homes get snapped up by first-time homebuyers, or increasingly, investors. Zillow is reporting that 46.7% of all homes available for sale nationwide are in the “top tier”; more than a fifth (22.3%) of available inventory was priced in the bottom third of all homes.
