'Oracle of Wall Street' who predicted 2008 financial crash says rise in young, sexless men living with their parents will cause house prices to plunge 30%

A financial analyst nicknamed the 'Oracle of Wall Street' has said a 'growing crisis of the young American male' will cause house prices to fall as much as 30 percent.

Meredith Whitney, who earned the title after predicting the financial crisis of 2007 - 2008, suggested young men increasingly living with their parents and disinterested in starting families will drastically reduce housing demand.

The trend of men refusing to settle in turn means more women are remaining single into later life, leaving them without the income or need for big family homes.

But it comes as baby boomers start to downsize, meaning there will be a surplus of available family homes. Much of the last decade's gains in property values have been driven by high demand and low supply - a phenomenon, Whitney says, is reversing.

To explain the rise in men living at home, she pointed to the increasing prevalence of video games, starting in the mid-2000s.

'You feel like you're with other people but you're actually at home alone, and that created a big chasm in young male sociability,' she told DailyMail.com.

Whitney cited US Census Bureau data showing that before the financial crisis around 13 percent of men aged between 25 and 34 lived at home.

That rose to as high as 22 percent during the pandemic but even after falling back down was still almost 20 percent in 2023. It was only in the last decade that rate had risen above 16 percent.

The data also shows that young women have consistently been around twice as likely to leave their parents' homes. Last year, just 12.3 percent were still at home.

The figures coincide with a decline in romantic relationships among young men. A 2023 Pew Research study found 63 percent of males under 30 describe themselves as single. 

Experts have attributed the figures to a confluence of factors such as increased porn consumption, the rise in hook-up apps and the legacy of lockdown during the pandemic.

'The pace at which young men live at home versus young women live at home is around 2x, I correlated all of this with in the early, mid-2000s launch of the Xbox, Wii and PlayStation,' she said.

'The biggest driver of home prices has historically been household formation,' Whitney told DailyMail.com. 'Household formation today is the lowest it's been in 160 years.'

And household formation, she said, is driven by the 'five Ds' - 'diamonds, diapers, divorce, debt, and death.'

'Without at least the first two Ds, there's no reason to buy a home,' she said.

Whitney previously told Fortune the drop could be as much as 30 percent.

Single women have increasingly been purchasing homes of their own. Female buyers alone make up 19 percent of American homebuyers - almost double that of single men - according to recent data from the National Association of Realtors. 

That is a stark contrast from 40 years ago when the portion of single women and men buying homes was roughly the same - 11 percent and 10 percent respectively. 

As of 2023, the proportion of single men purchasing property has stayed steady at 10 percent. According to the NAR, the share of recent buyers who are married couples has also dropped to 59 percent. 

In 1981, when the organization began analyzing the profiles of buyers and sellers, married couples made up 73 percent of homeowners.

However, according to Whitney, single women alone will be unable to absorb the entire supply of large, family homes.

'I don't see single women buying a four bedroom, three bath home,' she said.

And spurring the downsizing of the elderly into smaller homes are rising costs, Whitney said.

Despite the inconvenience of moving in old age, burdensome costs like household expenses, property taxes, insurance, utilities, homeowners association fees and mortgages may leave them with little choice.

While the youth aspiring to buy homes may be eagerly waiting for baby boomers and older homeowners to start vacating theirs, whether or not that will happen is up for debate.

A Redfin survey in February found that out of more than 800 Americans aged 60 and older, some 71 percent said they would stay in place in their current homes.

A separate study by government-backed lender Freddie Mac downplayed the significance of the 'silver tsunami' - a metaphor sometimes used to describe population aging.

'Some have warned of a 'silver tsunami' as aging boomers look to sell their homes, flooding the market with inventory,' it read.

'But as this analysis demonstrates, the tsunami is more like a tide, bringing a gradual exit that will mostly be offset by new entrants.'