‘Silver tsunami’ or ‘silver glacier’? – the Baby Boomer impact on supply of homes

The findings nonetheless came as a surprise to Eddie Seiler, housing economist and executive director for RIHA at the MBA, who told Mortgage Professional America (MPA) that experts had expected to see a huge excess of supply once the baby boomer generation was taken out of the equation.

He said: “When we originally asked Gary Engelhardt to write this, the big thought was going to be huge upsets in the housing market. (With) millions of baby boomers exiting the home, there was going to be a tremendous excess supply.”

In the event the report – based on decades-long projections – found that the effects will be predictable and slow moving.

“Many people have called this phenomenon the ‘silver tsunami’ and in fact it’s more of a ‘silver glacier’,” he joked. “The extra supply of a quarter million a year, when we put that into relative terms, is a small share.”

Seiler praised Engelhardt’s research, pointing out that it linked a variety of data sources from the American Community Survey, as well as household, retirement and mortality data.