Meet the baby chasers - they're transforming the housing market and solving the childcare crisis

By Aarthi Swaminathan and Jessica Hall

Baby boomers have been driving home sales over the last few years. Many of them are moving to be close to their grandchildren.

Ryan and Shoshanna Shapiro moved closer to their daughter so they can help out with their grandkids.

Linda Pelland moved to be closer to her grandkids - but not too close.

Pelland, a 74-year-old real-estate agent, and her husband relocated from Syracuse, N.Y., to Raleigh, N.C., in 2016 to be near their son and grandchildren, who were then 4 and 6 years old. When they first moved to Raleigh, they rented an apartment. It was "wonderful to be around them," Pelland told MarketWatch.

But she knew that as the kids grew older, they would need some space - as would she and her husband.

"You have to find a way to interface, not intrude," she said. Pelland and her husband later moved two hours away to Wilmington, N.C., where they now live near their daughter, who also relocated to the area.

Through the years, she said, she had always been available to babysit, and while her kids did come visit, she said that she was well aware that they would not "rearrange" their lives just because she was around.

Pelland is part of a long-term, generationally driven trend in the housing market, sometimes called "baby chasing," in which older Americans move closer to their children and grandchildren. In fact, one in four baby boomers plans to retire near their children or grandchildren, according to a new report by NewHomeSource and Zonda.

Linda Pelland moved from upstate New York to North Carolina so she could be closer to her grandchildren.

Baby boomers, who tend to have significant equity in their homes, have driven the housing market over the last few years. Record-high home prices and soaring mortgage rates have priced out many younger buyers, leaving comparatively better-off boomers, who are now between the ages of 61 and 79, as the dominant force in home buying. In 2025, four in 10 homes were purchased by baby boomers, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors.

Within this cohort, grandparents have emerged as a distinct group of home buyers.

"Grandparents are a key component to the housing market," Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research at NAR, told MarketWatch. "The pull to be close to one's support system in retirement, the warm feelings of family, but also layered in is the need to lend a hand for childcare and a growing concern of eldercare."

Since 2019, the most common reason people give when they sell their home and relocate is that they want to be near friends and family, Lautz said, citing NAR data. "With a steady share of retirees active in the housing market, the trend will remain and is only likely to grow as housing affordability remains a drag," she added.

The housing market where the baby-chasing trend has been clearest is in Raleigh, where it is driven by strong, sustained growth among multiple generations.

The city added 24,000 households in 2025, helping it edge out Nashville, Tenn.; Houston; Dallas; and Charlotte, N.C., for the top spot, according to NewHomeSource and Zonda's 2026 Baby Chaser Index.

The annual NewHomeSource/Zonda report analyzed census data to identify markets seeing both recent momentum and sustained household growth across generations, offering a look at where young families are putting down roots and where their parents are following them.

Parents with family support save thousands of dollars a year on childcare

Having grandparents nearby can help defray rising childcare costs and offer some peace of mind, according to new data from the BMO Real Financial Progress Index.

Nearly half of Americans with young children at home live close to family members who can help, the company said, and this proximity has a significant financial impact.

Parents who have family support nearby said that they saved about $1,915 per year on childcare by having willing grandparents babysit their kids or having family help buy groceries. For instance, parents who have family members who help them out spend about $1,600 a year on babysitters, but parents who don't have family nearby spend over $3,500 per year.

Proximity to family also gives parents of young kids a sense of financial well-being: 85% of those parents expressed confidence in their finances, as opposed to 71% of those without a local support network.

When Katie Shepherd and her family relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Austin, Texas, in 2022 for her husband's job, the in-laws followed. They packed up their belongings and moved from Las Vegas to Georgetown, Texas, where they bought a house in 2023.

Shepherd, who is expecting her fourth child, said that having a grandparent around to help take care of the kids was a key reason she decided to have more children.

In fact, it was so important to her and her husband that grandparents were nearby that they gave her in-laws some money to help them buy a slightly more expensive house in Georgetown.

If the grandparents weren't able to help out, "there would be more burnout," Shepherd said. "Yes, you can hire help, but that's not the same" as having a hands-on grandparent being willing and physically able to pitch in with caring for small children.

In Dallas, real-estate broker Josh Ellis told MarketWatch that his in-laws had moved close to his home in Texas from California when he and his wife had kids. His own parents had moved to Colorado to help out with his brother's kids.

Such moves are often possible because the baby boomer generation is not only sitting on massive amounts of wealth accumulated through their lifetime, "they have a tremendous amount of equity in their homes," Ellis told MarketWatch, adding that he's seen a large share of older buyers pay in cash for their home.

The financial and psychological reasons to move closer to grandkids

For some boomers, moving closer to family isn't as much a financial decision as a psychological one. Suzy Minken, 70, relocated to Fairfax, Va., from New Jersey in November 2024 to be there in time for the arrival of her granddaughter, who was born in January 2025. Her daughter's family lives in nearby Vienna, Va.

Her daughter had asked her to move closer and "without blinking an eye, I said yes. It was a no-brainer. It was logical. It was the best decision ever," Minken said.

"I was moving to be with my granddaughter in an ordinary way. I wanted the ordinary - not just birthdays and holidays," she said. "I was saying yes before I knew what I was even saying yes to."

Before her move, Minken saw her daughter about six times a year, but now it's every week or even every few days. She is part of her daughter's family life and she shares games, traditions and routines with her granddaughter. She has gotten to watch the baby grow up from the day of her birth.

"Now I don't have to be a grandparent that visits. I get to be there for the everyday," Minken said.

'I don't have to be a grandparent that visits. I get to be there for the everyday.'Suzy Minken

The downsides of moving close to family

But living close to family can come with unspoken expectations and occasional tension due to different parenting styles.

And the responsibility to take care of another generation is not a one-way street: About 70% of parents with family support are also responsible for their own aging parents' emotional or financial well-being, the BMO Real Financial Progress data found, compared with 45% of those who do not have family living nearby.

Seven in 10 parents who live near loved ones identify as members of the sandwich generation - those who are simultaneously supporting young children and aging relatives.

Avoiding drama by adjusting expectations

Some grandparents are very attuned to the potential for mismatched expectations. Like Pelland, Shoshanna and Ryan Shapiro also wanted to move closer to their grandkids while still giving their own children space to breathe.

"We very much respect the life they're trying to create on their own without the influence of parents sticking their heads in their business," Ryan Shapiro said.

The Shapiros, who moved to Frederick County, Md., from nearby Montgomery County in 2021, had decided they wanted to be closer to their daughter, who was pregnant with their first grandchild.

Five years and two more grandkids later, Shapiro, who at 56 is a member of Generation X, said he is happy they made the move when they did. At the time, the 30-year mortgage rate was below 3%, so they were able to buy a newly built home with a 30-year rate of 2.5%, using the money they made from selling their previous home. The pandemic home-buying frenzy really helped them, he said: They received $80,000 over the asking price for their previous home, which they rolled into the new home.

They try to be mindful of when their daughter needs their help, he noted. But when they pitch in, which they do on a regular basis, they go all in together as husband and wife, partly because of the sheer effort it requires to rein in small children. "We're helping each other out and giving them baths and reading them books and just keeping them occupied," Shapiro said.

In North Carolina, Pelland shares that philosophy. "From the grandparents' perspective, do not expect to have your kids rearrange their life," she said. "It needs to be a dance, and you need to actually be the one not leading, but learn how to follow very carefully."

Moving is not always easy for senior homeowners - but it can pay off

Marcia Kaiser, 76, and her husband relocated from Bergen County, N.J., to South Orange, N.J., in 2020 to be closer to one of their daughters and two grandchildren. They also have another daughter and two grandchildren in Brooklyn, N.Y.

After living in the same house for 45 years, moving and downsizing was a big project, Kaiser said. It took a year to declutter and scale down.

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