For Millennials, Gen Xers Are Living the Boomer Real Estate Nightmare

Tales of intergenerational turmoil tend to strike a nerve, so I steeled myself for some angry emails last month when I wrote a story about the millennials who aren’t ready to inherit homes from their baby boomer parents. Both boomers and millennials have good reason to get touchy about media scrutiny — each side has caught plenty of grief for the economic shortcomings of the younger generation. But in all my mental preparation, I failed to consider that my story would piss off an entire other cohort: Gen Xers.

What I wrote still rings true: Millennials stand to inherit trillions of dollars’ worth of real estate as baby boomers age out of the market, which means they’ll soon be wading through complicated questions about trusts, taxes, and what to do with all of their parents’ worthless junk. In nearly 3,000 words on this looming wealth transfer, however, I made no mention of Gen Xers.

Readers let me have it.

“You seem to not realize that there was a generation between the boomers and the millennials,” one wrote.

“Not trying to be a bitch, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to salvage your credibility.”

“Please remember that Gen X exists.”

In the grand scheme of internet discourse, the messages were polite and level-headed (typical Gen Xers), but there was one email that really stuck with me. It was from Amy Reed, a 52-year-old in Ohio, who wanted to emphasize that Gen Xers like her were already dealing with the nightmare scenarios outlined in my millennial-centric story. Members of the so-called Sandwich Generation, in their mid-40s to early 60s, are stuck with the daunting task of sorting out their parents’ affairs while also helping out their own children. And nobody seems to care.

“I know Gen X is the forgotten generation,” Reed wrote. “It just hurts when I’m the one dealing with this.”

In my defense, baby boomers and millennials are the two largest living adult generations, and together they drive the housing market. Boomers own a whopping $19.7 trillion worth of US real estate, or 41% of the country’s total value, so it’s no surprise their concerns rise to the top in any discussion of America’s homebuying shifts. Millennials may not be the richest, with only 20% of the nation’s real estate value to their name, but they are the largest cohort by population (and maybe the loudest).

By contrast, Gen Xers get lost somewhere in the middle. Their population numbers lag behind both millennials and boomers. While they own about $14 trillion of real estate, or 29% of the country’s value, they’ve also had more time than millennials to amass that wealth, riding out the market’s gains since the global financial crisis. Gen Xers may inherit a portion of boomers’ riches, but economists and demographers I talked to say the vast majority — or whatever is left of it after costly retirements and eldercare — will end up in the hands of millennials.

I know Gen X is the forgotten generation. It just hurts when I’m the one dealing with this.Amy Reed, Gen Xer

Reed was right, though. Gen X really is the forgotten generation. These poor middle-agers, former latchkey kids raised on MTV, are now toiling in the shadows, upstaged by the splashier generations on either side of them.

“The boomers kind of sucked up all the air in the room,” Eric Finnigan, a demograher at John Burns Research and Consulting, tells me. Millennials, by extension, get all this attention as the children of the boomers. Gen X, meanwhile, “has this reputation as kind of being on their own,” Finnigan says.

Gen Xers appear to be doing just fine on the housing front: They were the highest-earning buyers last year, and around 70% of them own their homes, data from the National Association of Realtors and the Census Bureau shows. But while millennials may look enviously at their ho-hum path to prosperity, Gen Xers got screwed in their own way, too. The typical Gen Xer bought their first home in 2004, in the thick of the housing bubble, NAR data shows. After the financial crisis, their cohort was the most likely to end up underwater on their homes. By 2014, more than a quarter of Gen Xers owed more on their mortgages than their houses were worth, NAR found, the highest rate of any generation.

Most Gen Xers have recovered financially since then, says Jessica Lautz, an economist at NAR who studies demographic trends. Now, though, they’re caught in a different kind of bind as they care for two generations with vastly different needs. A survey published in September by John Burns indicated that around 40% of Gen Zers living on their own still got financial help from their parents — most of whom are probably Gen Xers.

“There’s a lot of financial pressure on this generation, actually,” Lautz says.

Reed knows this all too well. We talked on the phone a few days after she emailed me, and I was struck by how much her predicament speaks to the stress of being a Gen Xer these days. Her parents are in their 80s, divorced, and dealing with various health issues. Each of them is a homeowner for now, but Reed knows that in the not-so-distant future, she’ll have to move them into senior living. Then she’ll have to figure out what to do with their property — not just the houses, but the decades’ worth of stuff stashed inside. “That is just beyond daunting,” Reed tells me.

Reed and her husband also send money each month to their two children, ages 27 and 30, who rent homes in California and Arizona because they can’t afford to buy. Reed says she’s trying to save up to help them with down payments when they’re ready.

“I work full time, my husband works full time, and we just kind of do what we can,” Reed says. “You just balance it, because you don’t have a choice.”

There’s a lot of financial pressure on this generation, actually.Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist at the National Association of Realtors

Reed says between the monthly payments to her children and all those trips to take care of her parents when health crises strike — not to mention the time off from work — she has no idea how much all of this is costing her. “I don’t want to know,” she says. “I just do it.” Her own children, “cuspers” who may count as either young millennials or older Gen Zers, depending on your definition, are already begging her not to leave them with piles of stuff and an aging property that requires lots of maintenance. Reed’s goal, she says, is to eventually sell their house and move into an apartment out west, closer to the kids. She hopes to leave them with money, not a bunch of open-ended questions.

Such financial pressures have other Gen Xers fretting over whether they’ll be able to afford retirements at all. One woman in her 50s told Business Insider last year that she had spent more than $100,000 taking care of her mother in a 15-year span.

“I’m exhausted financially, and, frankly, I didn’t consider growing up I’d be the financial rock of my family,” she said.

Every cohort is guaranteed to go through its own Sandwich Generation moment, caught at the life stage when its members are relied upon by both their parents and their children. It’s difficult enough to shoulder all of those burdens at once. It’s another thing to do it with hardly a pat on the back.

Gen Xers aren’t known for making a fuss, though. They’ve kept their heads down, grinding through their careers and bumping Nirvana through their headphones. Reed isn’t any different.

“I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing,” Reed says. “And you know, how society views my generation? Whatever. I can’t change it.”

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider’s Discourse team.

Business Insider’s Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day’s most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.