Baby boomers are setting up a showdown with millennials, aging in place and plunking down hundreds of thousands on renovating their homes

The housing world is a bit of a generational war zone, mostly between baby boomers and millennials. 

Baby boomers make up more than one-third of all homeowners, and more than half don’t even have a mortgage, Eric Finnigan, vice president of demographics for John Burns Research and Consulting, previously told Fortune—a figure that is still true today. So in our current environment, where mortgage rates skyrocketed from historic lows throughout the pandemic to a more than two-decade high in October 2023, being mortgage-free is like hitting the mother lode. It’s partly why baby boomers aren’t moving—because why give up no mortgage rate, or a substantially lower one, for one that’s nearly 7.5% today?

On the other hand, millennials, many of which haven’t even bought their first home, are looking at a much different housing market than before the start of the pandemic—one where the salary needed to buy a starter home has almost doubled, the cost of owning a home is the highest on record, and low inventory levels are much more dire. 

And baby boomers are sitting on particularly large homes that millennials who are starting families need. A 2024 Redfin analysis from found empty-nest baby boomers own 28% of the country’s largest homes, those with three bedrooms or more; and........

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