What Will Happen to Grandma's House When No One Wants to Buy It?

The first time Arthur C. Nelson and I spoke about what he's come to call the "great senior sell-off," back in March, he was broadly worried that baby boomers would soon begin trying to sell large suburban single-family homes that no one would want to buy.

Tastes change. Demographics shift. And America's home-ownership rate has been on the decline. Combine all of those factors, Nelson predicted, and the gap will only widen in the coming years between the share of seniors trying to downsize, and the number of young families eager to take their place in the kind of housing popular in the 1990s.