The downside to all this is that they will either turn entire neighborhoods into rental properties or their heirs will. Neighborhoods populates by people who have no skin in the game to maintain property value.
Discussion
Absolutely, they're sitting on mythical equity and can't access what they actually want which is liquidity so they're forced to rent to tap into cash flow, I've seen a trend of boom mates where boomers are renting out rooms to cash flow their property too!
I live in a thoroughly geriatric suburban neighborhood. Still very nice. But I watch it happen every day. Last resident of the house dies, family tries to sell it for "market value", house sits on market for months, and eventually they just rent it out. This is sometimes delayed by some boomer from out of state who wants to die looking at the mountains, so they buy their suburban mausoleum and become my neighbor. Nobody else can afford this shit.
You can tell who is going broke in retirement, because they can't afford to run their sprinklers.