---
title: Older Americans Are Expected to Free Up 13.9 Million Homes by 2036, Few of Them Starter Homes
description: Realtor.com expects 13.9 million homes from aging owners by 2036, mostly family-sized. Starter homes and the coasts get little of the silver tsunami.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-10-05T23:07:03.498Z
updated: 2026-10-05T23:07:03.509Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/silver-tsunami-13-9-million-homes-2036
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-an-elderly-couple-stands-in-front-of-a-charming-house-holdin-5637720.jpg
categories: Real Estate
content_type: News
region: United States
publication: Sovereign Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation are expected to give up about 13.9 million of the homes they own between 2026 and 2036, according to a forecast Realtor.com published on October 5, and only a sliver of them are the starter homes first-time buyers are trying to buy. The forecast puts 9.9 million of the total in family homes with three or four bedrooms and 3.6 million in homes with five bedrooms or more.

The oldest Boomers turn 80 this year, and the youngest members of the Silent Generation are already past 80. Realtor.com's economists say homeownership among older Americans holds steady into the mid-70s, begins to slip in the early 80s and falls more steeply in the mid-to-late 80s.

The two generations own an estimated 36.7 million homes today, and [Realtor.com expects that number to fall to 22.8 million by 2036](https://www.realtor.com/research/generational-housing-succession-2026/). They released roughly 8 million homes over the past decade, so the coming decade's total is about 74% higher. The handoff, often called the silver tsunami, speeds up through the decade, from about 1.27 million homes in 2027 to 1.52 million in 2036.

Most of today's releases come from the Silent Generation, whose numbers fall each year. Realtor.com expects Boomers to overtake them as the largest source around 2029, and because Boomer releases are still rising in 2036, the peak is likely to come after the forecast ends.

> "The scale of this transition is unlike anything we've seen in the past decade, and it's accelerating every year."
> — Jiayi Xu, Senior Economist at Realtor.com

## Seven in Ten of the Released Homes Have Three or Four Bedrooms

Family homes will come free at nearly 1 million a year, equal to 24.7% of recent family-home listings. Not every released home will be listed, and Realtor.com's segment examples assume that half reach the market.

Family-home listings on Realtor.com between July 2025 and June 2026 ran 9.7% below their pre-pandemic average, while family-home sales were 24.4% lower. Realtor.com projects that older owners will release 0.91 million family homes in 2027 alone; if half of those were listed, family-home inventory would be back at pre-pandemic levels, all else equal.

Realtor.com says trade-up buyers may get more choice and softer prices, and that first-time buyers can gain indirectly, because starter-home owners who move up into those family homes put their smaller homes on the market.

Large homes will come free at about 360,000 a year, equal to 67.2% of recent large-home listings, or 33.6% if half reach the market. Large-home listings are already only 2.2% below their pre-pandemic level while sales are down 18%, and Realtor.com expects the added supply to be felt most immediately in this segment.

## Older Owners Will Release Only 380,000 Starter Homes by 2036

Boomers and the Silent Generation own 1.33 million starter homes, 51.3% of all starter homes, yet Realtor.com expects only 0.38 million of them to be released over the decade. That is about 38,000 a year, equal to 3.2% of current starter-home listings.

Owners of small homes are more likely to have paid off their mortgages, which gives them less reason to sell: among homeowners aged 70 to 79, 72.8% of starter-home owners own their homes free and clear, compared with 58.9% of large-home owners.

The median listing price of a starter home between July 2025 and June 2026 was 65.2% above its pre-pandemic level, roughly $118,000 more, and Realtor.com says [many entry-level listings go unsold because buyers are priced out](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/income-needed-starter-home-versus-typical-home-june-2026). Starter-home listings are also about 10% below their pre-pandemic average. If every starter home released by older owners reached the market, Realtor.com estimates that gap would close around 2030; if half did, around 2034. National Association of Realtors data put the median age of first-time buyers at 40 in 2025, the highest on record.

## Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Rochester Could Get More Homes Than Buyers

The National Association of Home Builders, mapping where older owners' homes are concentrated, found that [New York, Los Angeles and San Diego have high pent-up demand but little exposure to supply from older homeowners](https://eyeonhousing.org/2026/04/the-silver-tsunami-isnt-landing-where-its-needed-most/). In NAHB's analysis, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Rochester are at risk of oversupply because their populations have grown slowly or shrunk.

Seven of the ten metros with the highest share of households aged 65 and over are in Florida, led by The Villages at 68.2%, and NAHB expects retirement markets like these to see the largest influx of available homes. NAHB says metros in the South and interior West are better placed to absorb the turnover, and that Charlotte, Denver and Austin in particular could benefit from added supply.

## Older Owners' Homes Will Not Close the 4 Million-Home Shortage on Their Own

Realtor.com puts the US housing shortage at 4.03 million homes in 2025. The 13.9 million figure is larger but not comparable, because those homes come free over ten years rather than all at once, and the fewest of them are at the entry level, where first-time buyers feel the shortage most.

“The handoff is a welcome relief, but it is not big enough to solve the housing shortage issue alone,” said Jiayi Xu, Senior Economist at Realtor.com.

Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies projects that household growth will average 859,000 a year over the coming decade, down from 1.2 million a year since 2000, and Realtor.com says that slower demand could add downward pressure on prices.

Mortgage rates rose above 7% in September for the first time since January 2025, according to Realtor.com, and 20.8% of listings had a price cut that month, the highest September share since 2018, after [inventory had already climbed through the summer](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/housing-supply-six-year-high-buyers-market-2026). Realtor.com expects the result over the decade to be “a gradual, regionally uneven, segment-specific softening, concentrated in family and large homes and in slower-growing metros, rather than a dramatic, uniform price drop everywhere at once.”

## FAQ

**Q: What does silver tsunami mean?**
It is the housing industry's nickname for the wave of homes expected to come free as Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation age. Realtor.com counts a home as released when its older owner dies, moves into institutional care, combines households with someone else or moves to a rental.

**Q: Why are baby boomers not selling their homes?**
Most have not yet reached the ages when owners usually give up their homes. Realtor.com puts the median age of Boomer homeowners at 68 in 2024 and about 80 by 2036, still below the mid-80s, when homeownership among older Americans falls most steeply.

**Q: What counts as a starter home?**
In Realtor.com's research, a starter home has two bedrooms or fewer, a family home has three or four, and a large home has five or more.

**Q: Is there really a housing shortage?**
Realtor.com estimates that about 1.8 million potential Gen Z and millennial households were missing in 2025, because people who would have set up their own homes are still living with parents, relatives or roommates. The South has the largest gap in absolute terms, at 1.62 million homes, and the West the smallest, at 660,000.