Older Americans own plenty of large homes and commentators suggest younger adults have multiple reasons for not going after such homes:

Younger people have loads of reasons not to be charmed by the vaulted ceilings and chef-ready kitchens of homes perched on mountaintops or hugging beaches that promised solitude once but now cry of isolation…

A report from Business Insider highlights numerous reasons that younger people might not want to saddle themselves with such beautiful albatrosses. Down payments, student debt and preferences for rentals in cities coupled with vacation home getaways have all contributed to what the report characterizes as “millennials wiping out starter homes.”…

And that is those among them who can actually manage to save up a down payment. Too many others are so burdened by student debt that buying a house is a foggy image off in the distant future. And lots of young homebuyers underestimate what it will cost them to keep a house, making it less likely they’ll bite off more than they can chew the next time they go home-shopping.

Factoring in their concerns over the environment—the energy footprint of a big house and a long commute—and their disinclination to own cars, as well as the need to hold down multiple jobs or have one or more side hustles—and it looks as if those mega-residences are liable to stay on the market for quite a while longer.

While one angle to this is that Baby Boomers will have a hard time selling their homes, the other side is whether the younger generations want and can get to such homes. I have seen little suggestion that young adults truly desire McMansions.

But, I would not write off this possibility just yet. I could imagine several possible scenarios where McMansions happen to end up in the hands of future generations:

1. Younger adults do well enough economically – or enough of them do since not all Baby Boomers own big homes either – to keep McMansions going.
2. Baby Boomers cannot sell their large homes, the prices drop, and the homes are more in the reach of younger adults.
3. Enough McMansions are converted to other uses – think multi-family housing – to keep the prices up enough to keep everyone happy. (Or, in a more dystopian model, McMansions are simply bulldozed or replaced to limit the supply.

I have a sneaking suspicion McMansions will be passed along in decent numbers to the next generation…despite the wishes of some.