Gen Xers and millennials will inherit trillions of dollars in real estate over the next 10 years

A seismic wealth transfer is set to shake up America’s high-end housing market.Gen Xers and millennials are set to inherit nearly $2.4 trillion in US real estate over the next 10 years, according to a new report from brokerage Coldwell Banker Global Luxury.Graying generations of baby boomers have spent decades accumulating a historic pool of private wealth.

Americans 60 years of age or older today possess almost two-thirds of US wealth — a marked uptick from just a decade ago, when this cohort owned less than half of the pie.Older Americans with net worths exceeding $5 million are expected to pass down more than $17 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the data, first reported by the Wall Street Journal.This change-over has been dramatically dubbed the “Silver Tsunami,” and it’s coming for the high-end real estate market.Nowhere is that “Silver Tsunami” more powerful than in the US, where roughly 52% of all global real estate activity is expected to be concentrated over the next decade.Brokers, attorneys and wealth managers told the Journal that the wave is already having an impact on the country’s luxury housing market, as wealthy families snap up real estate assets ahead of parents’ deaths and accompanying inheritance taxes.That includes dynastic families securing homes for their children in South Florida enclaves and Manhattan brokers catering to the modern tastes of demanding trust fund kids.As the wealth transfer accelerates, sprawling legacy properties are getting passed over, too, bringing more multi-generational estates onto the market for the first time this century.These historic family retreats hitting the market require extensive, and increasingly costly, upkeep and shared management that some heirs are unwilling to take on, or unable to buy out their siblings.New York City Compass agent Ian Slater told the Journal that the generational turnover is sending NYC price tags soaring.“I used to commonly see people buy $3 million...