How a Return to Multi-Generational Living is Shifting the Housing Market #realestate #investment #homeownership

Source:  Curbed

Multi-generational living, when more than one generation lives under one roof (not counting young children or teens), has hit record levels in the U.S.

Growing life expectancy, changing immigration patterns, and affordability issues all contributing to the increase and developers and architects are scrambling to respond. 

Making Sense of the Story:

- In 2014, according to Pew Research Center data, 60.6 million people, or 19 percent of the U.S. population, lived in multi-generational homes, including 26.9 million three-generation households.

- That's up from a 1980 low point, when the rate was 12 percent.  It's nearly a return to the 1950 rate of 21 percent.

- The nation's growing and increasingly diverse immigrant population plays a big role in the shift.  In 2014, 28 percent of Asian and 25 percent of Hispanic households were multi-generational, both up from five years prior - and a significant jump from the rate found in white households, just 15 percent.

- A report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, the number of Americans over 80 will double, from 6 million, in the next two decades.  And by 2035, one out of three U.S. households will be headed by someone over 65.

- A 2016 survey found that 44 percent of home shoppers in a group of 20,000 hoped to accommodate their elderly parents, and 42 percent planned to accommodate their adult children.

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