multigenerational housing is on the rise - two stories show it is working in my own family!

If your house is feeling a little cramped with the addition of adult children or aging parents, it might be time to consider a move-up into a multigenerational home that better suits your changing needs.

This story hits home for me.

I have two separate sets of relatives that share a multigenerational home for different reasons. Both are thriving. And together, they have a much better living set up than most of them could afford on their own.

The first are my cousins in Murrells Inlet. They officially retired from Newtown, Connecticut to MI in 2019. We searched for a home with at least 4 bedrooms. The family consists of a mother, father, daughter, fiancée and fiancée's father. The mother and father have the master bedroom on the first floor of the home. The daughter and husband have two rooms upstairs. One is used as a bedroom and the other is used as an office/den for the 30-something couple. The father-in-law resides across the hall in his own room. The family shares evening meals together. The men have spectacular workshops in the garage where they work on their various projects. Everybody loves to go to the beach. Together, they care for two dogs. They pool their resources for groceries, utilities and home upkeep. This scenario is working out very well.

Even better, the parents are using the equity in the home as a wealth transfer mechanism for the daughter. The home was purchased with a sizable down payment from lifetime savings and a mortgage. When the Connecticut home was sold, the balance of the home was paid off. Subsequently, in the years to follow, each parent gifts the maximum equity ownership allowed by tax law to the daughter. In a few years, the daughter will "own" the home and will evade probate issues with the will. Perfectly legal, the home will be hers. You can't inherit something you already own. And she could have never afforded the luxury home price on her own with just her salary. Her company transitioned to a work from home tele-commute office, so she is technically still working in Connecticut while looking at palm trees and sunshine in January.
And the parents are enjoying "paying it forward" to their daughter while they are alive to enjoy it. BRAVO.  Great pre-planning and execution from a beach chair on Huntington Beach.

My other family members have a completely different set up.

Three of my brother's children live together under one roof. All of them are working professionals between the ages of 38 and 44.
They live in a giant, expanded split level home with an inground pool in a suburb of Boston. The current value of the home has risen to over $1-million. 
My nephew, a single, busy executive, purchased the home and his sisters pay rent. One niece and her 3-year old son live on the upper floor of the house with two very large bedrooms and a full bath. Her work with a major university in Boston recently transitioned to a work from home position three days per week.  My other niece, a multi-media librarian is married with two children. They live on the main level of the home with three bedrooms. The lower level of the house is where my nephew lives. Everybody has a space to retreat to. The pre-teens have their space. They are all living very well together and it makes it easy for the grandparents to visit. You might say this is truly a family village ecosystem looking out for one another with enough space to have healthy boundaries. This set up is working.

In my own family scenarios, generations are pooling their resources to afford homes in the "luxury" price range to get the amount of bedrooms and bathrooms necessary. The older generation can look at options for wealth transfer of the home to avoid inheritance hassles as a result.

So what can the take away be for you? With benefits that include a combined home buying budget and shared caregiving duties, an increasing number of households are discovering the value of a multigenerational home. With such high demand for houses today, now is a great time to sell so you can upgrade to a multigenerational home that may better suit your evolving needs.
 
Plan ahead. I can help.