The Population Is Older Than Ever And The Real Estate Market

The average age of our population is now 38, which is way up from 1980. Also, the real estate market is out of control. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is shocking news somebody wants expressed to me or
I read and it made it quite an impression that
news stories, stories are waves. Demographics are the tide. They
change everything for a very long time. And the US
population is older than it has ever been. According to

(00:21):
new census data, the country's median age is now over
thirty eight. In nineteen eighty it was thirty wow, which
is a huge change. Demographically, it's been a rapid rise.
In two thousand. A little more recently it was thirty five,
so it's up three and a half years or so
in the last twenty three years. It's all about birth rates.

(00:44):
Our birth rates are quite low. Like many European and
Asian countries, the United States is graying, posing challenges for
the workforce, the economy, and social programs, and low birth
rates rates rather are the main driver.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Year we all gettle older. I've noticed.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
That's a factor too, jack Well said. The oldest state Maine,
at almost forty five years old median young youngest state.
I'll bet you can guess if you think about it,
youngest state. It's all about birth rates. Who has babies?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Who has babies? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Mormon stew ah u tah, gotcha big families you taw
is thirty two to forty five. Yeah, there's thirteen years
younger median age than Maine, which is astounding. Hmmm. When
Europe the median age is forty four. Wow. Once again,

(01:41):
it's about thirty eight here. Wow, that's a problem, is croaking.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, that's a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
I've read all sorts of stories because I'm kind of
a real estate geek about how these dying villages in
Italy or are selling the real estate to Americans and
various folks so you can go buy yourself a villa
and rehabit and live in Italy.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I might speaking of real estate, and maybe I'll get
into it in more depth later, but I was talking
to a local real estate expert about this yesterday. Uh.
The biggest thing going on right now in real estate
across the country is all the people that have these
low rate loans that ain't never gonna sell their house. Nope,

(02:25):
just ain't. And those rates are never coming back. It's
just it would take some sort of weird, very weird,
calamitous situation to ever get back to rates like that again,
So nobody is gonna want to give up their home
loan and late Honey, you want to downsize for the
same money, No, and probably downsize a lot for the

(02:46):
same amount of money.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
So unless you're retiring and like going from a house
to an apartment or something like that. It just just
nobody is going to sell their house. People have never
been this locked in for these kind of reasons. So
what will happen with the housing market.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I can't even imagine. I don't see how we get
out of this except bit by bit over years. So
you've got so many like the rise in interest rates
would absolutely depress prices. Those are diametrically opposed in the
world of real estate, absolutely, unless you have such brutally
short inventory that props up the prices. So this is

(03:26):
like I said to Jack a couple of days ago,
it feels like tectonic plates under the earth have built
up a lot of pressure and when they shift, they're
gonna shift big.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yes, this real estate expert I talked to said seventy
percent less homes sell. It was a drop in seventy
percent of homes that sold for June compared to a
normal gym. That's a big number. That is a giant
number