Note To Baby Boomer Parents Whose Estate Plan Includes Buying The Perfect Real Estate Property For Their Kids: Back Off

For New Yorkers, nowhere else could ever be home.  This has been true since the days when the factories of the Big Apple first began to cover New York’s impressive skyline with smoke, and it is still true, despite all the economic changes that have taken place since then.  You have heard all the stereotypes about millennials and their failure to launch, and you know they aren’t true. You know it isn’t because they spend all their money on avocado toast, because the food in New York’s diners and delis has always been both expensive and irresistible. The problem is that everything else has gotten so expensive, and the young generation works just as hard as their parents did, but for less compensation, whether in the form of money, job security, or benefits.  Homeownership seems like a remote possibility for many Americans born after 1980.  The only difference between your kids and other millennials is that their parents can afford to help them pay for a down payment on a house.  A Bronx estate planning lawyer can help you get into the best possible financial position to help your kids in the short term and the long term, but it is up to you to rein in your inner helicopter parent so that your kids can close on the house they want.

Generational Wealth Horror Stories: Real Estate Agents Speak Out

Baby Boomer parents who help their children buy real estate aren’t that bad, are they?  Just ask the New York City real estate agents interviewed for a recent post on the Curbed website.  These real estate brokers told tales of parents who ran roughshod over their children’s efforts to buy a good enough house or condo in the Bronx.  Some millennials’ dads would detect a minor fault with the property and consider it a deal breaker.  Others would refuse to budge on what they considered a reasonable price, although real estate properties of comparable size had not sold in the Bronx in decades.

What to Do Instead

Home ownership remains a cornerstone of generational wealth.  The impulse to help your children buy a house is an admirable one.  Meanwhile, it is important for you to let your kids make their own decisions about which properties to buy.  It is better if you simply give them cash gifts, modestly sized ones over a period of time, and disengage emotionally from the real estate buying process.  For example, you can give cash gifts of up to $17,000 per recipient in 2023.  Perhaps the best option is to give these gifts to your children for several years while they ride out the vicissitudes of the real estate market.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney

An estate planning lawyer can help you develop an estate plan that enables you to help your children without the generations meddling too much in each other’s business.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

curbed.com/2023/02/boomer-dads-realtors-nuts-millennial-gen-z-buyers.html