In 2018, city life was becoming unsustainable for Rachel Zack, 41, and her husband Jason Fitzgerald, 45.
They were spending $2,100 per month for a three-bedroom in Astoria and around $2,400 a month on child care for their then-2-year-old daughter.
Their combined income was roughly $250,000, but home ownership still felt out of reach.
“We didn’t have a lot saved,” Zack said.
Then, one night in early 2018 over dinner, Fitzgerald had a brilliant hack for first-time homeownership and free child care — they’d ditch their rental and share a mortgage with Zack’s parents.
“We got to talking and we were like, ‘This makes sense,’ ” Zack, a Broadway stage manager, told The Post.
Zack’s parents, both in their 70s and retired, had been wanting to downsize from their home in Sherborn, Massachusetts, to be closer to their grandkids.
So, Zack and Fitzgerald pitched them an idea: They would all buy a six-bedroom, seven-bathroom house with a driveway big enough for three cars and a sprawling backyard in South Orange, New Jersey.
“We said, ‘It’d be good to have a house that’s big enough to be the center of family life,’ ” Zack said.
They closed on the house in June of 2018 for $950,000. Zack’s parents paid for half in cash from selling their house, while Zack and Fitzgerald took out a mortgage for $450,000. The whole clan — including Zack’s nonagenarian grandmother — moved into the home that summer.
“It’s an everybody-wins situation,” Zack said.
Everyone helps care for grandmother, and Zack’s parents watch her 2- and 7-year-old daughters when she works nights and weekends.
With sky-high housing costs, astronomical child-care fees and wages not keeping up with inflation, multigenerational housing — living in a home that includes two or more adult generations — is becoming more appealing and necessary.
One in four Americans ages 25 to 34 lived with parents or family members in 2021, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Living with kin is also looking different than it once did. A sizable number of older adults are moving in with their millennial children. In 2021, 9% of multigenerational homes were headed by a 25 to 34-year-old in 2021, up from 6% in 2001.
“Multigenerational living has increased among all age groups over the past five decades. But the increase has been fastest among adults ages 25 to 34,” Richard Fry, an analyst with Pew Research, wrote.
Adjusting to multigenerational living for Zack and her husband, who works in live event production, was easy since their 4,500-square-foot Colonial home is large enough to afford ample privacy.
Zack’s parents have a bedroom above the garage with their own bathroom on one side of the house. Grandma has her own bedroom and bath as well.
Zack and Fitzgerald have a room on the other side of the house, along with an office on the third floor.
There are multiple communal spaces — a living room, a family room and a finished basement — but they often do their own things.
Zack and Fitzgerald say their marriage is thriving, thanks in part to the fact that they can easily leave the kids with Zack’s parents and go to a spa or hiking in Woodstock.
“Even though we’re very much together, we try to be aware of having our alone time,” she said of family hangs. “[But] we do have a tendency to watch ‘Jeopardy!’ together.”
When it comes to finances, Zack and Fitzgerald pay a mortgage on their portion of the home’s purchase price.
Living expenses and groceries — which typically total $6,000 monthly — go on a family credit card and are split amongst the generations.
While Zack’s parents moved in years after retiring, some parents are sharing homes with their kids to save for their golden years.
Daniel Kane, 48, was getting tired of punching the clock for 12-hours-long shifts at a labor-intensive job working at a mining company in Safford, Arizona.
So, last year, his daughter Darin Freeman, 30, convinced him to sell his home and come work with her husband selling appliances online.
At the end of 2022, Daniel and wife Tiffany Kane moved into the five-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Tampa, Florida, that Darin and husband Joshua Freeman had recently purchased.
Darin, a social-media influencer, is relishing time with her family, and said having her dad and stepmom around has been a big help at home, from cooking to cleaning and watching her kids, Alina, 7, and Kane, 6.
The Freemans pay the mortgage while the Kanes contribute $1,000 to groceries and utilities and help with child care — something the Freemans were previously spending $18,000 a year on.
“My dad does the grocery shopping, my stepmom cooks — everyone contributes,” Darin said.
But, Zack admits that, despite the free child care and shared expenses, not every day in a multigenerational household is hunky-dory.
When she’s bickering with her mom while trying to find the cereal after she cleaned the cabinets, or her father is playing drums in the basement, or grandma’s friends invade at 10:30 a.m. to play mahjong, it can feel more like the “Family Feud” than the “Brady Bunch.”
But, they make it work.
“We’re crazy close. That’s an unusual dynamic,” Zack said. “But we actually enjoy spending time with them.”
