I agree with both Shoveler and flyer. I myself am a “boomer” and have only known ONE boomer who has lost her home to foreclosure (all due to legal fees expended in attempt to gain custody/visitation of her youngest child, now an adult). She never gained any custody/visitation and her last child aged out of the court’s jurisdiction two years ago. Unfortunately, this scenario is quite common among single moms in CA whose children(s) father is deep-pocketed enough to keep litigation going ad infinitum and were successful in turning their child[ren] against the other parent for the sole purpose of avoiding having to pay child support.
In CA, whichever parent earns the most money (and thus can provide the child[ren] with the most stable home) usually prevails in family court child custody disputes.
After much thought, I have decided to keep a home in CA, even if I decide in the coming year(s) to relocate. I will either keep my present home or sell and purchase a similar or slightly smaller single-family home in another CA county and place tenants in it.
I don’t want to find myself one of the many (foolish) people I have known throughout the years (all older than boomers) who sold their home in SD County to relocate in retirement out-of-state only to return to CA in 3-5 years at the age(s) of 65-75 years old, desperate to purchase another home but find themselves unable to. These people couldn’t repurchase ANY residence (much less than the one they sold) in their CA coastal hometowns because they lost money on their out-of-state home purchases due to (1) high selling costs; (2) lack of appreciation; and/or (3) their over-improvement of said out-of-state purchase (or combination of the above).
The vast majority of boomers who own their primary residences in coastal CA counties aren’t going anywhere, especially those whose current assessments are a mere fraction of their propert(ies) market values pursuant to Props 13, 58 and 193.
All the foreclosures/short sales I studied between 2008 and 2011 had “Gen X” owners, 90% of whom were living wa-a-a-a-ay beyond their means (by ATMing their property to death to buy more property and/or for consumption). The other 10% paid way too much for the property using exploding sub-prime mortgages.
In CA coastal counties, Gen Y is only now starting to get off the ground in purchasing a primary residence for themselves (they weren’t homebuyers during the 2004-2007 era of fog-a-mirror mortgage lending). Gen Ys who grew up in CA ARE getting good jobs but as flyer has stated here many times, the vast bulk of the good jobs are in the SF Bay area and LA/Ventura/Orange Counties (NOT SD County) with the majority of good, living-wage jobs located in the five of the eight SF Bay area counties. I have heavily counseled my kid(s) to NOT relocate back to SD County but to stay put, earn as much as they can (even if they have to job-hop to do so) and try to save downpayments for a house.
