First home buyers can’t afford a house until their parents die

With first home buyers ignored in the Budget, chances of entering the housing market are slimmer than ever. This is why young Aussies are now waiting until someone they love dies so they can buy, writes Katy Hall.

If you’re one of the few working-class millennial Australians still holding out hope to one day become a first-time homebuyer, it’s likely that Tuesday’s federal Budget came as quite the blow.

Not because of any blatant favouritism shown, but more through its wilful twisting of the knife by completely ignoring the issue altogether.

No grants, no additional funding, no savings measures, no policies to provide assistance for those hoping to secure an entry-level property.

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This constant inability to address what remains to be the single most pressing issue for many millennials has now left a huge cohort of people with two ridiculous options: either we win the Lotto or sit back and wait for our parents to die.

Given the odds of the former, most young people are simply facing bleak facts and banking on the latter.

Many people now rely on inheritances to get into the market. Picture: Supplied

Call it morbid, but for young people wanting to enter the real estate market, there is an increasing fear that unaffordability is here to stay. And unless your parents can provide a deposit or act as guarantor, the time frame in which the temporary market cool is predicted to last is nowhere near long enough for most to save the required amount.

In December 2018, a survey conducted by home loan lender ME revealed that 77 per cent of aspiring buyers are worried that housing is increasingly out of reach for them.

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And while no one wants their loved ones to die so that they can enter the housing market, the abysmal reality of circumstances is now that death, and the lump sum inheritance that often comes with it, is likely to be the only event that opens up the otherwise impenetrable market to aspiring homeowners like me.

As it currently stands, my husband and I pay more in rent than we would on a mortgage by a relatively substantially amount.

Australians like myself are paying more in rent than we would in mortgage repayments. Picture: Supplied

Were we to buy a similar property in a nearby area, we’d likely save around $400 a month after meeting our mortgage repayments. Many people within my age range are in the same position with no idea what to do.

On a recent visit to my mother’s house I found myself wondering what the average house price in her suburb now is and doing the basic maths of what that minus some fees and divided by three kids would potentially leave me with.

It felt dirty, greedy and like an outright betrayal.

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But what so many older Australians who cover their ears over this issue don’t seem to realise — while turning up their nose to the many studies that show millennials to be better savers than previous generations — is that the prospect of not getting into the housing market is an all-consuming issue that fills young people with a foreboding sense of hopelessness.

Simply working hard and saving no longer works the way it used to. Picture: Supplied

Like many of my friends, I did everything right. I’ve been working in part-time and full-time jobs since I was in high school. I went to university. I paid off my near $40,000 university debt. I’ve saved money. I’ve built up a good credit rating. I’ve paid tax and developed a robust superannuation account.

Yes, I’ve taken overseas holidays, ordered food from delivery service apps, and splurged on some nice clothes, but in no way do these combined purchases come close to totalling what is now required for a housing deposit in most Australian cities.

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It’s unbearably infuriating, but for as long as we can’t get ahead and the government remains deaf to this growing issue that refuses to go anywhere, we’re destined to remain on a hamster wheel fretting about our futures until invariably, someone we love dies.

Now, to all the boomers feeling a desperate need to yell about how this is an imagined problem being raised by an over-entitled generation, kindly sod off. Or alternatively, feel free to add me to your will.

@katyhallway