The "Silver Tsunami" That Wasn't
Why South Bay Boomers Are Staying Put (and What It Means for the Market)
For years, the real estate industry has been waiting for the wave.
The “Silver Tsunami” — the idea that millions of baby boomers would downsize, sell their homes, and flood the market with inventory — has been one of the most persistent predictions in housing. The logic seemed airtight: boomers own nearly $19 trillion in real estate wealth, roughly half of the nation’s total. They’re aging. Their kids have moved out. The big house doesn’t make sense anymore. Any day now, the listings would come pouring in.
Except they haven’t. Not nationally. And certainly not here in the South Bay.
Instead of a tsunami, what we’re seeing is something closer to a slow drip — and in markets like Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach, even that drip is barely registering. The question isn’t whether boomers will eventually sell. They will. The question is when, and what happens to the market while we wait.
The Numbers Tell a Different Story
A Redfin survey from June 2025 found that **one in three baby boomer homeowners say they will never sell their home **[1]. Not “not right now.” Not “when rates come down.” Never.
That’s a striking number, and it lines up with what I see every day in the South Bay. Homeowners who bought in the 1980s and 1990s — who raised their families here, who know every neighbor on the block — aren’t looking at spreadsheets and deciding it’s time to optimize their equity. They’re looking at the ocean from their back deck and thinking, Why would I leave?
Meanwhile, a record 340,000 homes changed hands through inheritance in the 12 months ending in August 2025, according to data analytics firm Cotality [2]. That’s 7.4% of all transactions — the highest share ever recorded. On the surface, it looks like the first crest of the wave.
But zoom out. Those 340,000 inherited transfers represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 30 million homes owned by Americans aged 65 and older. As Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones put it: “Though this is a significant development, it is perhaps more notable how many older homeowners are staying put for longer. Recent ‘aging in place’ trends suggest that the transfer of property between generations may be more of a trickle than a flood”.
A trickle. Not a tsunami.
Why South Bay Boomers Aren’t Moving
If you’re a homeowner in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, or Redondo Beach, you already know the answer intuitively. But let me lay out the forces at work, because they’re more powerful than most people realize — and they’re compounding.
The Rate Lock-In
This is the one everyone talks about, and for good reason. If you bought or refinanced during 2020 or 2021, you’re likely sitting on a mortgage rate somewhere between 2.5% and 3.5%. Today’s rates are hovering around 6.5% to 7%. For a home in Manhattan Beach — where the median price just hit a record $3.325 million [3] — that rate difference translates into thousands of dollars per month in additional housing costs.
Here’s a way to think about it: to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced Manhattan Beach home today, with 20% down and a 6.9% rate, you’d need an annual household income of approximately $802,000. That’s not a typo. Even for the South Bay, that’s a staggering number — and it illustrates why homeowners with locked-in rates feel like they’re sitting on a golden ticket they can’t afford to give up.
There is some movement on this front. A January 2026 analysis from Realtor.com found that for the first time since the pandemic-era boom, the share of outstanding mortgages with rates above 6% now exceeds the share with rates below 3% [4]. The lock-in effect is loosening — but slowly, and unevenly. In high-cost coastal markets like ours, where mortgage balances are larger, the financial penalty for moving remains enormous.
The Prop 13 Fortress
This is the California-specific factor that doesn’t get enough attention nationally but is absolutely central to what’s happening here.
Proposition 13, passed in 1978, caps property tax increases at 2% per year regardless of how much a home appreciates. If you bought your Manhattan Beach home in 1990 for $500,000, your tax basis has grown modestly over 35 years — even though that home might now be worth $4 million or more. Sell it and buy something new, and your property taxes could increase by tens of thousands of dollars annually.
The data bears this out. Cotality’s research found that California had the highest share of inherited home transfers of any state — a stunning 18% of all transactions, nearly triple the national average [2]. Cotality principal economist Matt Delventhal pointed directly to Prop 13: “The Prop 13 tax incentives are completely unique — no other state has a similar regime.” He noted that the benefit of keeping a long-held home in the family can represent “a difference of literally tens of thousands of dollars per year in many cases” [2].
And here’s the kicker: under current law, direct heirs — children and grandchildren — can inherit those Prop 13 protections. That creates a powerful incentive not just to stay, but to pass the home down rather than sell it. In the South Bay, where a family home might have appreciated from $400,000 to $4 million, that inherited tax basis is worth a fortune.
Redfin reported in March 2025 that California homeowners stay in their homes longer than anywhere else in the country, with the typical U.S. homeowner staying 11.8 years while Californians hold on significantly longer [5]. Prop 13 is a major reason why.
There’s Nowhere Better to Go
This is the factor that gets overlooked in the national conversation but is painfully obvious to anyone who lives here.
Where exactly is a South Bay boomer supposed to downsize to? A smaller home in Manhattan Beach still costs $2 million or more. A condo? The options are limited, and the HOA fees can rival a mortgage payment. Move inland? You lose the beach, the weather, the community — everything that makes this place worth what it costs.
As one commenter on a real estate forum put it bluntly: “Boomers are saying there is no place cheaper for them to move, so they are not selling.” It’s not that they don’t want to simplify. It’s that the math doesn’t work, and the lifestyle trade-offs feel too steep.
Emotional Gravity
And then there’s the factor that no spreadsheet captures: these homes aren’t just assets. They’re where the kids grew up. Where the holidays happened. Where the neighbors became family. In a community like the South Bay — where people walk to the beach, know the baristas by name, and run into friends at the Strand — the emotional cost of leaving is real.
I’ve sat across the table from homeowners who know, rationally, that it might make sense to sell. But when they think about leaving the neighborhood, the conversation shifts. The numbers stop mattering as much. And they stay.
What This Means for the South Bay Market
The consequences of boomers staying put are already visible in the data.
Manhattan Beach recorded only 325 home sales in 2025 — well below the typical pace of about 400 per year, and far below the 518 homes sold during the 2021 boom [3]. Despite that low volume, the median home price surged to a record $3.325 million, up 9.9% from 2024 [3]. With just 1.3 months of housing inventory available, the market remains firmly in seller’s territory.
Think about what that means: fewer homes are changing hands, yet prices keep climbing. That’s the textbook result of constrained supply meeting persistent demand. And the primary reason supply is constrained? Longtime homeowners — many of them boomers — aren’t listing.
Sources: Easy Reader News, Redfin, Zillow — data through December 2025/January 2026
All three Beach Cities remain seller’s markets. All three have limited inventory. And in all three, the underlying dynamic is the same: the people who own the homes aren’t selling them.
So When Does the Wave Actually Come?
Here’s the honest answer: it probably doesn’t — at least not the way the industry has been imagining it.
The “Silver Tsunami” narrative assumed that boomers would behave like previous generations of retirees: sell the family home, move to a smaller place or a retirement community, and free up housing stock for younger families. But this generation is different. They’re healthier, they’re wealthier, they’re more attached to their homes, and — thanks to Prop 13 and pandemic-era mortgage rates — they have enormous financial incentives to stay exactly where they are.
What’s more likely is a slow, uneven transition that plays out over decades rather than years. Some homes will be sold when life forces the issue — health crises, divorces, job relocations, the loss of a spouse. Others will be inherited by children who may or may not sell. Cotality’s research suggests that in California, many of those inherited homes never reach the open market at all — they stay in the family, preserving the Prop 13 tax basis [2].
The lock-in effect will continue to fade as more homeowners hold mortgages closer to current rates [4]. Life events will override financial calculations for some families. And eventually, the sheer passage of time will bring more homes to market. But the idea of a sudden flood of listings? In the South Bay, I wouldn’t count on it.
What This Means for You
If you’re a South Bay homeowner — especially one who’s been thinking about your next chapter — here’s what I’d want you to take away from all of this.
If you’re thinking about selling: You have more leverage than you might realize. Inventory is tight, prices are at record levels, and buyer demand in the Beach Cities remains strong. The market isn’t waiting for a flood of competition — because that flood isn’t coming. If your life circumstances are pointing toward a move, the conditions are favorable.
If you’re thinking about staying: That’s a perfectly valid choice, and you’re not alone. One-third of your fellow boomers feel the same way. But I’d encourage you to think about your long-term plan — not just for the house, but for your equity, your estate, and your family’s financial future. There are strategies worth exploring even if selling isn’t on the table right now.
If you’re waiting for prices to drop: I understand the impulse, but the data doesn’t support it — not in these zip codes, not with this level of supply constraint. The forces keeping inventory low are structural, not cyclical. They’re not going away next quarter.
Whatever you’re thinking, I’m here to be a sounding board. No pressure, no pitch — just honest perspective from someone who’s been watching this market for decades.
Call me at 310.383.2779, or subscribe to Your Real Estate Insider to get every article delivered to your inbox.
Gary Senser is a residential real estate agent with the Botello & Senser team at Estate Properties in Manhattan Beach. He publishes Your Real Estate Insider on Substack, covering market strategy, policy, and demographics for the South Bay Beach Cities.
References
[1]: https://www.redfin.com/news/baby-boomer-homeowners-never-sell/ “Redfin, “1 in 3 Baby Boomers Say They’ll Never Sell Their Home,” June 2025.”
[2]: https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/silver-tsunami-inherited-homes-record/ “Realtor.com / Cotality, “Homebuyers Keep Waiting for the Silver Tsunami — It Might Not Show Up,” January 22, 2026.”
[3]: https://easyreadernews.com/real-estate-manhattan-beach-kicks-off-2026-with-a-bang/ “Easy Reader News, “Manhattan Beach Kicks Off 2026 with a Bang,” February 12, 2026.”
[4]: https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/selling-a-home/housing-market-lock-in-effect-easing “Kiplinger, “Is the Housing Market’s ‘Lock-In Effect’ Finally Starting to Ease?” January 2026.”
[5]: https://www.redfin.com/news/homeowner-tenure-california-longest/ “Redfin, “The Typical U.S. Homeowner Stays Put For 11.8 Years,” March 2025.”