A recent article in the National Post; “Millennials’ prolonged stay at Parents Inn is having a profound impact on housing markets – but the desire to own a home remains strong” got me thinking that there is already a workable solution to this.
There is no denying this is a very real and very true issue. Millennials are living at home for longer than before, and parents are feeling the pressure financially to take care of their grown kids as well as prepare for their own retirement.
In my opinion, the issue could be partly alleviated by some additional planning and out of the box thinking ahead of time.
For example, I have a few investor friends with kids and as soon as their kids were born or were very young, they bought them a house instead of putting money aside in an RESP. It can be a less expensive investment house outside of the main city, perhaps near a university town an hour or 2 away from a major city.
When your child is 18 and ready for post-secondary school, the house has not only been paid down by more than 1/2 but it has appreciated about 4% a year! Your young adult child now has the ability to use the equity towards a university degree or move into the house or even sell it and use it as a downpayment on another house. There are just so many more options than you would ever have with an RESP.
Let’s look into it in more detail so that when you have kids of your own you can plan to not have them live with you until they are in their thirties:
Buy a house for $250,000, downpayment and closing costs of approximately $60k. (Yes I know, it’s a lot but maybe as a parent, you already own a house and can use the equity in your primary residence to get the downpayment together). After 18 years you will owe only $108,882 on the mortgage and the value of the house will be a whopping $506,454!!
There are now endless possibilities, so break the cycle and think outside the box.
For now, the issue of millennials still living at home exists and will continue to exist but I believe one day you can get yourself out of being one of these stats and do the same thing for your future kids.
