If you follow the housing market at all, you have heard the phrase silver tsunami. The idea is that a generation of owners is about to list all at once. The resulting flood of inventory then changes everything.
The underlying trend is real. The word tsunami is doing work it has not earned. If you are deciding about your own house, that distinction matters.
What the silver tsunami numbers actually say
Freddie Mac put a figure on it. Freddie Mac projects boomer homeowner households falling from roughly 32 million in 2022 to 23 million by 2035. That works out to 9.2 million fewer boomer homeowner households.
That sounds enormous. Spread across thirteen years it is not.
Freddie Mac’s own language is worth quoting. The report says the tsunami “is more like a tide, bringing a gradual exit that will mostly be offset by new entrants.” By 2028 it estimates about 2.7 million homes freed up nationally. The same report notes that on a more recent retention rate, the decline would be closer to a million less.
So the headline number is a decade-plus projection, not a year. And new entrants replace most of the people leaving.
The data that undercuts the silver tsunami story
Here is the part that gets left out, and it points the other way entirely.
Older owners are moving less than the generation before them did. Cotality analyzed Census data on this. Between ages 65 and 75, more than 22% of homeowners born in 1938 moved. Among those born in 1946, that figure was 17%.
They also own more. Homeowners born in 1948 held 50% more homes at age 65 than those born a decade earlier.
More houses, held by people less inclined to move. That is the opposite of a wave breaking.
Inheritance is picking up some of the slack. Roughly 340,000 American properties changed hands through inheritance in the twelve months ending August 2025. Cotality reports that as 7% of all transfers, and the highest share it has recorded. A record share of a small number is still a small number.
Why the silver tsunami lands differently around here
National supply arguments assume the new inventory shows up where buyers want it. In Central New Jersey that assumption breaks.
The towns people actually compete for are largely built out. The shore communities driving demand have no meaningful supply of developable land left. That is part of why this market stays calmer than the national story suggests.
A gradual national release does not loosen a built-out town. It trickles into it, house by house, at roughly the pace houses already turn over.
If you are the owner everyone is talking about
Two bad frames show up constantly, and they are mirror images.
The first is waiting for the wave to pass, on the theory that selling into a flood of competing listings costs you money. On these numbers there is no flood to wait out. You would defer a decision for a market event that arrives as a trickle over a decade.
The second is rushing to beat it. Same error, opposite direction.
Your timing question is not demographic. It is about your house, your equity, and what you would do next. Staying put can cost less than selling, depending on the numbers. When moving does make sense, the property tax math usually decides it rather than the sale price.
If you are waiting to buy into it
Buyers hear silver tsunami and plan around a glut that softens prices.
Worth being blunt. If your plan depends on a national demographic trend producing cheaper houses in a specific New Jersey town within a few years, you do not have a plan. You have a hope with a timeline attached.
Buy when the house and the payment work. That calculation has nothing to do with anyone’s birth year.
What I would actually look at
I am a real estate agent. What I can tell you is what your house would bring now, and what comparable properties are doing in your town this month. That is a far more useful number than a national projection running to 2035.
Both figures above come from published research and are linked so you can check them. Projections get revised, and Freddie Mac revised its own inside the same report.
Has the silver tsunami talk left you wondering whether you missed a window? Send me the address and I will tell you what it would sell for today. Then the decision runs on your numbers instead of a demographic headline.
Shea Merritt is a licensed New Jersey real estate agent with eXp Realty, working with buyers and sellers across Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean counties. He grew up in Old Bridge. He writes here about the arithmetic behind a move: what a house would actually bring today, what the tax line does to a monthly payment, and how to compare offers on their terms rather than on the top number. If you are weighing a sale or a purchase, send him the address and he will run the numbers on it.