Lennar’s Next Gen – The Home Within a Home® opens the door to an array of financial and logistical benefits, while providing the opportunity to share the comfort of your home with loved ones. With one shared mortgage, there’s no need to pay a secondary rent or elderly housing costs. If you’re considering buying a home with your parents now or in the future, Claire Zulkey offers advice on what to expect in this recent article from The New York Times.
For Diana Limongi, the practical benefits of sharing a two-family house in Astoria with her parents are manifest. There is access to a car without having to own one, free Spanish immersion for her two children and periodic gifts of homemade lentils left in the refrigerator.
But the best part, the nonprofit consultant and writer says, is when she leaves the house. “I hear my mom talking to my daughter and cracking up. It’s just pure joy, and it’s a beautiful sound. They’re really enjoying each others’ company.”
Multigenerational households — homes where two or more adult generations live together, or those that include both grandparents and grandchildren — are on the rise across the country. A record 64 million Americans now live in a multigenerational home, according to a Pew Research Center report, up from 32.2 million in 1950.
There are multiple reasons for this shift: the increasing cost of long-term care; the growing immigrant population, in which shared housing has always been more common; and, of course, rising housing prices. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said that multifamily home purchases are especially prevalent now “because home prices are so expensive that the only way to make it work is to double up or triple up.”
And as their parents reach their 70s and 80s and need some help, he said, “you’re seeing those groups pair up in all sorts of ways.”
Finding the right property to meet the needs of multiple generations is an intimidating process, but it can be done — with patience, research, preparation and some luck. For those considering it, here are some lessons from families in which multiple generations now live happily together.
