The thing is, old age and experience will defeat youth and inexperience every time. Throw in a little experience based snark and a bit of treachery and it isn't even a fair discourse.  So, when those without fully formed brains or more recently fully formed brains want to play hardball, it is game on.  They don't like facing actual facts and fully capable experience honed intellects armed with those facts.

So, I estimate the Boomer response would be......

Nice you had an economy that allowed you to buy a house.

We built that economy.  What have you built? 

Regarding housing, in the case of many Boomers, make that houses.  In my case, 7 of them.  Which I own none of now. Because I am not stupid enough to play in this farce of an over inflated housing market and lock my assets into a house of cards market of inflated housing values that have not much direction to go in other than down.  So, when all of you young-uns are going through foreclosures after impulse buying on fee fees instead of researching and learning, we will be upgrading. With cash.  Watch and learn youngsters. Watch and learn.

Considering your young brained generations penchant for the instant access to knowledge you seem to think the Silent gen, Boomers, and  Xers do not understand or haven't learned technology.   Here is an AI summary of the housing markets and related history over 5-ish decades. It goes up, it goes down.  Look into the adage "What goes up, must come down" and learn something"

AI Overview

In the decades spanning the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the U.S. housing market experienced periods of both booms and busts, influenced by various economic and social factors

1970s: a booming market amidst stagflation

The 1970s saw a significant boom in real estate, with housing units increasing by 29% and the median price of new homes jumping from $23,400 to $64,600.

Factors driving this boom included demand from the baby boomer generation, rising inflation which made real estate an attractive investment, and increased zoning regulations that restricted land availability and pushed up prices.

The decade was also marked by stagflation – a combination of high inflation and slow economic growth – and rising interest rates.

Despite the high interest rates, the potential for capital gains and mortgage interest deductions made real estate appealing to investors. 

1980s: rollercoaster ride

The early 1980s saw a housing market crash triggered by the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes to combat inflation.

Mortgage rates surged to historic highs, peaking at 18% in 1981, leading to a sharp drop in home sales (nearly 50% between 1978 and 1982).

Despite the drop in sales, nominal home prices remained relatively stable, even increasing in the early part of the decade, according to some analyses.

Affordability improved after 1981 as inflation eased and mortgage rates began to decline.

However, specific regions like New England and California experienced significant boom-bust cycles in home prices during this decade, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. 

1990s: recovery and localized busts

After a challenging decade, the housing market started to recover in the 1990s, driven by an improving economy and lower interest rates.

Demographics played a role too, as baby boomers reached retirement age and began selling their homes, increasing inventory for younger buyers.

Mortgage rates declined significantly in the 1990s, reaching an average of 6.91% in 1998, according to Bankrate.

However, some areas, particularly large metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and New York, experienced localized housing busts in the early 1990s, with significant drops in home prices that took several years to recover.

These localized busts were not as widespread as the later 2006 crash, but highlighted the fact that housing market downturns can occur even without the factors seen in 2008, such as loose lending practices. 

Just because you youngsters know how to look it up, does not mean you can actually understand it and apply it to your advantage.  Ask us. We will help you.

We are living through an economic crisis and survived a pandemic.  Come back when you can figure out your technology.

So are and have the rest of us.  And your point? 

You are absolutely correct, it is our technology. We created most of it and what you have created uses what we created. You basically couldn't do what you do without standing on what we have built.

Do somethings for yourselves and stop whining.

Thanks to your generation -- you enabled predatory lending practices that have crippled us with debt and stood by while colleges increased tuition to benefit from those lending practices.

Actually, that was not a generational creation. That is a liberal everyone gets a trophy political movement that eliminated the meritocracy system that was based on actual performance.  The everyone gets a trophy movement embraced the naivete of fairness and mandated that everyone whether qualified or not had access to anything and everything as an entitlement with only some of us actually paying for it.  The us who paid and are paying for it, are the Boomers.  Since you are all forfeiting on your school loans.  The everybody gets school loans or a mortgage movement provided money to people who had no business either buying a house or going to college.   So, the universities led by the liberal cohorts of those leading that above mentioned liberal political movement said "Hey, endless money!  Lets create education plans that provide zero value to those pursuing them, have no associated career, and hey, lets give safe spaces to people without the analytical ability to select a course of study that brings themselves and society value."

Prove me wrong young people. You can't. Because it is documented factual history.  Your peers who pursued STEM fields and/or are entrepreneurs aren't making excuses.  They are creating value for themselves and society.  Follow their example.  And do you know who their mentors are. 3 guesses and the first two don't count.  Yep Boomers are their mentors, as are Xers.

Just ask. We will help.

I can use AI and TikTok to learn and figure things out quicker than you can pop up out of your recliner.

And your point is?  Umm, so can we, and we are using those technologies, as much or even more than you are.  The difference is that we know how to access those same technologies, assess the accessible information, and actually apply it to solve actual problems. We are not distracted by the non problems of fairness and equity.  Those things are earned young people. They are not granted.  We do not use the technology for a piranha feeding frenzy of content creator drama so all of your incapable whiny age peers can make excuses for their miserable existence and blame others.

Please, make something of yourselves and your life, raise your kids to be self supporting viable adults, and prove us wrong. We have already been there and done it. Unfortunately, some of us, created you. So feel free to blame us for that.

As for getting out of our recliners.  Most of us don't even have one. They are too damned hard to get out of. So we use high end high quality chairs that are beautifully designed and ergonomically efficient. You know, things that we created and earned that you cry about not having.

What have you done?  Please tell us with actual evidence of what you have done.  What are you going to do?  Don't answer that.  That is a rhetorical question. You can Google that big word if you need to.  Don't tell us, show us. You know, by actually doing something.

Please.

I'll be changing the world long after you've moved into your assisted living facility and are engrossed in the pickleball championships.

Hey, we will have you know that we own that retirement home, just like we own the home you are renting and can't affort to buy. Thank you very much.

Sadly, you changing the world in a positive way is decidedly unlikely. If you/we are lucky, maybe your children will.  Since as a generation you are proving that you do not have the character, the intellect, or the work ethic in high enough concentration to do much more than whine and blame others. The TikTok you so worship is an endless source of absolute proof of this fact.  Besides, how do you plan on changing the world when you are struggling to pay the rent on the properties that we own with your Gender Studies or pseudo science fee fee focused degree that you owe high $5figures or even $6figures on that you are not paying back. More likely than not, you never will. So, anything you actually do earn will be taken to pay those ever increasing debts.  Those are not our debts. They are your debts. You signed the loan docs.   Had you done some research, you would know that those loans cannot be retired under bankruptcy, ever.  Maybe you should have tried the work full time and go to night school on the pay as you go plan.  As many of us did.  No one forced you to take out school loans, no one forced you to study some cause oriented curriculum without an associated job market, no one is forcing you to buy over priced housing that a quick AI search would tell you is a bad idea and that in a relatively few number of  years will not be worth but a fraction of what you paid for it or what you owe for it, etc..  Guess what?  We will buy it out of foreclosure for penny's on the dollar and rent it back to you for far less than you were paying for it. Making money while we do it.

Prove us wrong youngsters, prove us wrong. Please. 

Now we are late for the pickle ball tournament and margarita happy hour where we will have experience based discussions on how frightened we are for you and the state of what we have built and are handing over to you to advance. We want you to actually do something rather than busting moves on TikTok and blaming others for your lack of progress. Let us know when you figure it out.  Or... just ask. We will give you the benefit of our experience.  If you can find your way out of our basements to actually ask.

Youngsters, do not piss off the oldsters. We know it all. We have done it all. If we don't know it all, we can Google it just as readily as your can, or design it, program it, or create it far more readily than you can. We can actually make sense of and apply the information and actually do something with it. Because we have already done it.

Above is how I would respond to the response from those whose fee fees were hurt by the tongue in cheek list of Snappy Boomer comebacks. You know, the overlie pierced and tattood TikTokers  who think that a thumbs up emoji is flipping them off and get their fee fees all spun up. If I were a Boomer with that kind of mindset. Which I am not.

I would say that in general and collectively, that we (Boomers) are not of that mindset.  We want each generation to advance on the accomplishments of the preceding generations.  Make it better.  Learn from history, improve on it innovate, advance the state of the world and mankind.

Someday no matter how unlikely it may be, when humankind is universally secure in resources and every human is self supporting and contributing, so we can explore strange new worlds, discovering new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no human has gone before, remember, that was our dream. For you young people.  It is up to you to make it happen.

 I now surrender the speaking for all Boomers soap box.  Though I am barely a Boomer. I am more of a Xoomer.  Born the last year of the baby boom.

All IMHO of course.

A fond hobby is going the way I want to go while Google Maps or the car's GPS system is wanting me to go another way and the young people in the  vehicle are are turning purple and losing their minds.   Then I pull in to a preferred parking spot or turn in without having to wait for oncoming traffic that I would have had to wait in if I had listened to the asshole partially knowldegeable voice in the dashboard.

Then I calmly park, ask a question about what the youngsters would be doing if they were driving and were sitting in traffic trying to turn across multiple lanes of traffic in front of  the opposite lane during high traffic times.

Grummble, grummmble, grummmble.

family opposition was my intent on sharing this.  Rather than coddling, ignoring their behavioral drama, etc.

Call it out. If they escalate, go for scorched earth destruction.

Ignoring the unacceptable behavior and actions of those people solves nothing. So solve it by shutting then down.

IMHO of course.

I guess a non escalating way to do it would be the gray rock method you recommend. Though I think I would spice that up a bit with.... "Prove it."  That takes their fee fees out of it.

Catching the top third when selling and the bottom third when buying tends ot be my target.

The leading indicators are starting to show softening in the housing market and is looking like it is shifting in the direction of a buyers market.   The current prices are completely artificial and counter to the fundamentals.

There will be opportunities over the next several years for buyers.  The challenge will be, IMHO, how will Boomer and retiree Xer cash money impact non cash buyers. Young people buying with a mortgage and modest down payments.   Because builders and developers have been limiting lot and new build releases, when resale inventory starts growing with the low new build numbers of many years cash buyers building rental portfolios will likely be major competition for first time young buyers.  

Your kids will be fine. They nave you.  The kids of quality parents will be fine.  It is the rest that I fear for.

Every generation of parents have feared for the world their kids will enter when they finish school.   Except the parents who are raising the whiners. Those parents, clearly don't give a shit.

It is sad that so many SParents are married to parents with Xs that are seemingly in the creating at risk kids column when it comes to likely adult outcomes for those kids.