Aussie Baby Boomers share how they really feel about Millennials’ home buying struggles

Aussie Boomers have revealed how they really feel about Millennials struggling to buy a home, with one landlord making a surprise admission.

A landlord Baby Boomer has opened up about the “guilt” he feels about the housing problems young Aussies are facing, saying his generation is responsible for their difficult situation.

Gregory Leech, who has two Gen Z children, says Millennials are facing far more hurdles getting into the property market than his generation did.

Speaking on SBS’s Insight on Tuesday night, Mr Leech said Boomers have “created a generation behind us that has fewer opportunities than we had”.

“I feel both a slight personal guilt, but certainly a collective responsibility for that,” he told the program.

“I think we’ve created a group of people that, for the first time, certainly postmodern, have a worse quality of life than the generation before them.”

When asked about the animosity some Millennials feel towards older Australians who believe they had it harder when buying their first home, Gregory said: “Who can blame them?”

Gregory Leech believes his generation has made it harder for Millennials to break into the housing market. Picture: Insight/SBS

“We’ve created a generation of people that are probably highly unlikely to own houses. When we have brought them up saying this is your home, it’s a really important family and social route and you can’t have it,” he said.

“I just don’t think it’s fair. You know, we’ve had the levers and mechanisms, oversight legislation that has put in place in the economy we have now.

“My generation, we have had those levers. So we created this situation. We also created the people we’re doing it to.”

He also hit back at the idea that Millennials were wasting money on “unnecessary” things.

“No, I don’t think they do. I don’t think there’s enough smashed avocado on the planet to allow you to save up for house,” he said.

“Yes, they do like nice things but this myth that kids are out there eating too much avocado and buying plasma screens and all that sort of stuff. There’s a little bit of that, but I don’t think it’s at all the problem that people say it is.”

Another Baby Boomer, Terri Cross, told Insight she believes a lot of young first home buyers aren’t willing to move out of the city in order to afford a house.

“I think a lot of other generations they’re not prepared to – it might sound awful to say – but they’re not prepared to extend and go out further.

“They want to be in an inner city, which is always going to be hard and always going to be high.”

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Terri Cross says other generations aren’t ‘prepared’ to move out of inner-city areas. Picture: Insight/SBS

The 75-year-old self-funded retiree said her first home was “right out” of the city.

She also noted it would be easier for Millennials to move out of the city because many are now able to work from home, an option she didn’t have at their age.

“A lot of the Millennials can work at home. That’s what I feel, my opinion. They can work at home and so if they moved out further – I don’t know, it’s just my thoughts,” she said.

Terri said she is fortunate now to have enough money to travel in her retirement, having “worked hard, saved money” and bought houses.

But she revealed there were times after buying her first home that she thought she would be forced to sell due to the “horrendous” rate rises, which went up to 18 per cent.

“I just had to cut down as much as I could. I never went out. I was working. But I never went out after work,” Terri said, adding it got to the stage where she couldn’t even afford to buy a cup of coffee.

“I had to take sandwiches to work and I couldn’t go out and get lunch. I’m really not exaggerating. It was really, really bad. But I got through it, thankfully.”

However, 30-year-old Ashley Swallow said it isn’t as simple as just moving out of the city.

She rents a home in Adelaide, having previously moved from Melbourne, and says just buying an affordable home far away from the city is easier said than done.

Ashley Swallow is a Millennial who is struggling to break into the property market. Picture: Ashley Swallow/Facebook

“Living far away means me and my partner would have to travel in for work,” she said, explaining this would mean they would also be separated from their friend groups and support systems.

“I feel I want to live where I’m happiest. And yeah, maybe that is the difference. But I feel like being happy in my life is more important than not being just for the sake of it.”

University of Sydney economist Gareth Bryant, who also contributed to the Insight episode, told news.com.au the problems facing Millennials wanting to buy their first home are very different from the ones faced by Boomers.

“In the late 1990s house prices were around 2-3 times average incomes depending on where in Australia you were. Now that figure is 7-10 times, meaning the problem is having enough wealth to get into the property market in the first place,” he said.

“Many Millennials could actually make mortgage repayments, but struggle to get the deposit.”

A recent survey of Millennials by the University of Sydney for the for the Australian Government’s Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) found young people were doing “everything they could” to save for a deposit.

Despite taking on extra hours and second jobs, cutting back on discretionary spending, being willing to move to outer-suburban and regional areas, Dr Bryant said they “still found themselves going backwards due to increasing house prices and rising rents”.

“The smashed avo on toast cliche is most definitely a myth,” he said.

Originally published as Aussie Baby Boomers share how they really feel about Millennials’ home buying struggles