The total value of homes owned by Baby Boomers in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford alone is £3,862,747,836 - and two-thirds of the Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials are set to inherit all that in the next few decades!
Could this be the answer to the housing crisis?
Could Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials live it up for the next few decades, safe in the knowledge they will get a huge lump sum to pay off their debts and buy a house with what is left?
Before I look at that, which set of people in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford exactly are the Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials or Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Baby Boomers?
Come to that, who are Generation Z, the Silent Generation or Generation X?
All these are phrases used for the different groups of people in their various life stages of our society.
So, splitting the groups down:
Silent Generation: Born 1945 and before (77 years old and above)
Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964 (58 years old to 76 years old)
Generation X: Born 1965 to 1980 (42 years old to 55 years old)
Millennials: Born 1981 to 1995 (27 years old to 41 years old)
Generation Z: Born after 1996 (everyone under 26 years old)
Using data from the Census, my research shows there are …
7,492 households in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford owned by Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Baby Boomers and they are worth a combined value of £3,862,747,836.
The generation that will inherit those Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford properties will be the millennials.
There are 5,161 millennials in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford.
After looking at the local demographics, homeownership statistics and current life expectancy, around two-thirds of those Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials have parents who own those 7,492 Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford properties, meaning each is in line for an inheritance of £1,122,113.18.
Now that figure is just a simple average and a lot more than the value of many properties in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford. A lot of that is to do the low number of millennials (as a proportion of the overall population) and the high number of baby boomers compared to the national average. The inheritance figure is just to show the extent of the money tied up in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford property and what that could do for the younger generation.
Yet what about Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford’s Silent Generation?
There are 5,617 homes in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford owned by the ‘Silent Generation’, and they are worth £2,896,029,711.
The issue for those who will inherit their parents’ homes is that there are far more Generation X people in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford than millennials.
Two-thirds of the 10,794 Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Generation X will inherit £406,515.08 - still nothing to sniff at yet not as much as the millennials!
So, whilst the Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials are less likely to own their own home compared to Generation X and so have done not as well in amassing their assets and savings, they are more likely to benefit from an inheritance boom in the years to come.
This is likely to be very comforting information for those Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials, including some from humbler upbringings who historically would have been unlikely to receive an inheritance.
Nevertheless, inheritance is not the silver bullet that will get the millennials onto the Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford housing ladder.
Nor will it deal with the increasing wealth inequalities in British society, as the inheritance they are likely to receive won’t be accessible when they are trying to buy their first Sawbridgeworth or Bishop’s Stortford home.
So, before all you Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials start running up your credit card bills, safe in the knowledge they will be paid for when your parents pass away in 20/30 years, over half of the females and around a third of men are going to have to pay for their nursing home fees.
Remarkably, I recently read 25% of people who must pay for their nursing home fees run out of money, and therefore have to rely on funding from the local authority.
Therefore, if you are a Sawbridgeworth or Bishop’s Stortford Millennial, no inheritance will be left for you. It goes without saying, most Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford parents want to give some inheritance to their children.
Yet if waiting until you pass away to help your children or even grandchildren with your legacy could be seen as too late, so what are the options?
One solution to help and fix the housing crisis in Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford (and the UK as a whole) is if parents and grandparents, where they can, help financially with the deposit for a house whilst their children/grandchildren are in, say, their 20's and early 30's.
Buying a Sawbridgeworth or Bishop’s Stortford property is much cheaper than renting – I have shown it many times in these articles.
It’s not a case of not being able to afford the mortgage; the problem is raising the mortgage deposit (of 5% to 10%) for these Sawbridgeworth and Bishop’s Stortford Millennials.
Maybe families should be discussing the distribution of family wealth whilst everyone is alive (in the form of helping the family with house deposits) as opposed to waiting until the end, as it will make a massive difference to everyone in the short and long run.
And a final thought, your legacy will have a more significant impact, and you will be here to see it with your own eyes.
A win-win for everyone.
