The stairs creaked in Jen Gorgano’s childhood home. Recalling these sounds makes Ms. Gorgano smile. “Growing up, we’d always know who was running up and down the stairs by how loud it was,” he said.
The squeak is still there. So does Mrs. Gorgano. She is in the process of buying the four-bedroom house in Commack, New York, from her mother, who now splits her time between Florida and her partner on Long Island.
“Financially it made sense,” said Ms. Gorgano, 25, a speech-language pathologist, who is buying the house for about $600,000 with her friend and co-buyer Mike Stillman. “My mom gave us a price. It’s less than what he would get if he sold it to a stranger,” Ms. Gorgano added. “It could sell for another $100,000. He’s definitely doing us a favor.”
Some first-time buyers are taking the “starter home” concept to another level. They’re buying the homes they actually started in: their parents’ homes.
“We’ve seen it more in recent years,” said Bob Driscoll, senior vice president and director of home lending at Rockland Trust, a bank with branches in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. “The one thing that’s clear in this market is that people need to look at different ways to get into home ownership.”
The typical starter home sold for $240,000 at the end of 2023, up 45 percent from pre-pandemic levels, according to online realtor Redfin. The average mortgage interest rate was 7.2 percent, compared to 4 percent before the pandemic. (As of early February 2024, the rate was 7.15 percent.) Further challenging prospective buyers: new listings of starter homes for sale in the spring of 2023 are down nearly 25 percent from 2022.
“I am very fortunate to have this opportunity,” Ms. Gorgano said. “Otherwise, I couldn’t afford to buy a house right now.”
The motivation for some of these buyers is to make life easier for their parents. But like many family issues, the dynamic can be complicated. (What is a fair price? How do the brothers feel about the deal?)
Scott Peritzman was a toddler in 1975 when his parents bought a four-bedroom house in Manalapan, NJ. Mr. Peritzman moved when he was 18, then living in Florida, CA and most recently in Princeton Junction, NJ, 30 minutes away. from Manalapan. Four years ago, he returned home.
“Mom and Dad had some illnesses and they were getting old,” said Mr. Peritzman, now 51, the virtual chief information officer at a technology company. “I wanted to help them with both the finances and the upkeep of the house. A lot of maintenance had to be done.”
Shortly after returning home, Mr. Peritzman, a longtime renter, broached the subject of buying the house from his parents — but keeping them in the house. “I had looked at new homes, fix-ups. It was always with my parents in mind,” he said. “But I didn’t want to take them away from their existing medical community and friends, and I wanted to make sure they didn’t have to move into an assisted living community.
“Ultimately, I decided that buying their home was the best decision,” Mr. Peritzman continued. who paid $510,000 and closed on the property in 2022, and has since done a complete renovation.
“My parents treat it like my home, but I don’t want them to feel that way,” she said. “I come from a small family. My sister and I are very close to my parents. They gave us a lot of opportunities growing up and I wanted to do everything I could to help them.”
“Some parents are on a fixed income and their child’s income is increasing, so having the child buy the house is a perfect solution,” said Mr Driscoll of the Rockland Trust. “It matches everyone’s dream. Parents get money to help them later in life. The child will acquire ownership of the house.”
Georgeann Wheeler worked three jobs to support herself, a five-bedroom cape in Hillsdale, NJ
“This place is her pride and joy. It was her investment,” said Stacie Gallo, 54, the oldest of Ms. Wheeler’s three children. Mrs. Gallo, a special education teacher, and her husband, Nick, a chef, bought the property four years ago. Mrs Wheeler, who is now 83, still lives there in a flat converted from the garage.
Early in their marriage, the Gallos were renters in a two-family home in Hawthorne, NJ Space became increasingly tight when the couple began having children. while trying to save money to buy a place, they moved into the Hillsdale home with Ms. Gallo’s mother and stepfather.
“We paid a little bit of rent, but we paid most of it by helping out,” Ms. Gallo said. “My husband cooked dinner and we did yard work.” Then, after her stepfather died and her mother became ill, she and her husband got an appraisal on the property – $525,000 – and bought it for $425,000.
“The house is in dire need of renovation, but it does the job for us,” Ms. Gallo said. “And my mother is comfortable here and happy here. I do the food shopping for her and she has dinner with us every night.”
For some of these first-time buyers, it’s not just that the price is right, at least manageable. They also preserve the heritage. “This was the first house my parents owned. It’s the first house I’ve owned,” Mr. Peritzman said. “And I get to keep my family name in the town where I grew up.”
Jen Gorgano says there’s an “extra layer of comfort” that comes with staying in her childhood home. “In the past, we did Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my mom’s family,” she added. “We hope to keep that tradition going.”