Man Mystified When His Boomer Coworker Refuses To Sell His House For More Than $50,000 Because The Real Estate Market Is 'Fake'
Is he a hero or a fool? Or maybe a bit of both?
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock There's no denying that the American real estate market is insanely inflated — we have the data to prove it. However, it can be difficult to believe just how high prices have gotten, especially when you consider that all those million-dollar starter homes will eventually cease to be worth a million dollars.
Still, most of us would never even consider not taking the money and running if we were to be in the market to sell a house right now, right? One boomer on the internet; however, has done the opposite to protest the insanity of the market, and it's hard to decide if he's some kind of hero or an outright fool.
The boomer sold his house for $50,000 because he says that's all it's worth.
Of course, there are houses out there that truly are only worth $50,000 — ramshackle, falling-down places whose best days are behind them. But according to this man's coworker, who posted the story to Reddit, that is not the case.
In his post, the man wrote that while they live in an "affordable state" as far as real estate is concerned, $50,000 is still an unbelievable deal in their area, and the house in question, a simple 1,200-square-foot brick ranch, was in great condition.
Aleksandrkozak | Shutterstock
This was no dilapidated fixer-upper. Rather, it's more of a situation of a boomer taking the generation's infamous obstinance to a whole new level, for better or worse. Or maybe both.
The boomer insisted only 'idiots' would pay more than $50,000 because the 'real estate market is fake.'
The house was actually the boomer's deceased mother's and had been in their family for decades. So when he told the Redditor he was selling it for $50,000, which is what he paid for a similar house nearby back in the day, "I thought he was joking, but he assured me he wasn’t."
As anyone would, the Redditor immediately went on Zillow to look at comparable properties. "Houses in that very neighborhood sell for anywhere from $198k to nearly $300k," he wrote. But the boomer was totally unfazed.
"His response [was], 'only idiots pay that much for a house because they are not worth that much. It’s all fake.' I could not believe what I was hearing," the man wrote. Even when he mentioned how much money the boomer could make for his retirement, "he didn't seem to care." Unsurprisingly, the house sold for $50,000 in a matter of hours.
The boomer is technically not wrong about the real estate market — it is wildly overinflated.
As we all learned in 2008 (many the hard way), real estate markets only grow for so long before the bubble bursts. Many of those who've plunked down millions in all-cash real estate offers in recent years for wildly inflated houses are going to be in for very rude awakenings eventually. There are already signs that a "cooling" of the market has begun in some areas, in fact.
Economists, however, say the main driver of our insane home prices, which have risen 423% in the past 40 years, is simple supply and demand — there just aren't enough houses available for all the buyers who want one. Until that changes (and it's unlikely to any time soon, especially if the new administration's tariff and immigration plans kick in), prices will probably continue inflating.
But there's more to the prices than just supply and demand. Housing has long been a financial product rather than a commodity — so-called "mortgage-backed securities" are what fueled the economic collapse of the Great Recession in fact, and those irresponsible financial instruments are still a vital part of the economy.
Even worse, though, we now also have a boom of corporations gobbling up available houses as investments or so that they can charge insanely expensive rents, as well as tons of individuals who've done the same to rent out homes on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.
This has resulted in devastating inflation of home prices that have basically turned houses into a luxury good only the wealthy can afford, all in a scheme that is frequently full-on illegal — houses purchased by investors are often bought in a process called "owner occupancy fraud."
So yeah, the Boomer is right: Like practically everything else, the real estate market is basically a giant scam. Perhaps he did someone a favor, then, but as the Redditor pointed out, it's equally likely that the person who bought his $50,000 house in a matter of hours was just another one of these fraudulent corporations who will flip it and sell it or rent it for an astronomical sum — or just let it simply sit empty, as investors often do.
The fact the Boomer walked away from hundreds of thousands in retirement money in the process makes the choice even weirder, but perhaps not as strange as the fact that you can argue he's a valiant Robin Hood or a spendthrift buffoon with equal ease and fervor. Just another chapter in the utterly bizarre story that is the U.S. economy.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.