>>> mortgages to purchase properties from elderly owners enjoying hundreds of percent gain after their own mortgage was less than their credit card limit today.
>I'm one of those elderly owners as are many of my friends in this community.
>The idea that we profited handsomely through house appreciation works, but only if our incomes increased while the value of the house did.
>Not necessarily in proportion but at least enough to handle increased real estates taxes - the taxes on my NY house increased almost threefold while I lived there - and maintenance costs.
>The other wrinkle is that the aged seller has to live somewhere - and inflation will have raised the cost of the new abode proportionally.
>Even with major downsizing on Long Island, I would barely have had enough from the sale of my house to afford a new one.

I foresaw the above wrinkle as well - my "solution" was to buy real estate with a few separate apartments, each not too large, and use more than one when I need more space, renting out the others. At the moment still using more than 1 apartment, probably renting out more room if offspring decides to rent own apartment(s) or buy for themselves - and the kicker is, if I grow so old and feeble to need supervision, it is relatively easy to free room(s) for the help to live in. Backdrop is/was having other people in the house - does not concern me, as I am thick skinned, bull headed and used to Finnish attitudes about personal attire ;-)
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>I chose to move from a high cost area - Long Island - to a low cost area - Central NJ.
>Housing costs are much lower and real estates taxes are less than half.

Rising energy and running cost for taxes and garbage collection were not anticipated in the current amount - maybe will have to invest a bit, as I like old style houses with more than 3m between floor and ceiling - nice to live in, a bit more expensive to heat...
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>My neighbors, however, are mainly from this area, so they didn't get that benefit.

The other option is to move from Frankfurt - but then probably go "dirty old man" full style and move to cheap surroundings with fringe benefits, perhaps in the Far East ;-)