Property investor claims Australia does not have a housing affordability issue

THERE is an insidious myth at the heart of our property market and “entitled” Australians desperately need to learn a tough lesson, an expert says.

According to Bushy Martin, the real problem is our “entitled expectations”. Picture: iStock

WE can barely turn on the TV or flick through a newspaper these days without hearing about Australia’s housing affordability crisis.

But apparently, there’s actually no such thing.

That’s according to property expert and The Freedom Formula author Bushy Martin, who is convinced the only issue is with our own “entitled expectations”.

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He said as a nation we were asking the wrong questions and treating the “symptoms rather than the cause”.

“Everyone goes on about the affordability crisis and there’s no doubt about it — if you want to buy property in Sydney or Melbourne’s inner ring, that’s going to be unaffordable for most people,” he told news.com.au.

“But it’s more of an accessibility and expectations issue than an affordability issue.

“It’s a dynamic multifaceted issue where isolated reactive and ill conceived interventions for the few are likely to have unknown and unintended far reaching consequences for the many.

“So do we really have a housing affordability issue? Yeah, nah.”

Mr Martin said first home buyers represented just one in seven property purchasers — and that as a country, we shouldn’t change the entire system for the “politically correct squeaky wheel minority”.

“Should we be turning housing policy on its head to cater for the few by meddling with the market that could potentially have significant impacts on the many?” he asked.

“Or should the few learn to suck it up, grow some b*lls, lower their short term expectations, start saving and become rentvestors or learn to live with a bit less for a little while to get started?”

Mr Martin insisted while we did have a problem in highly sought after areas, it was not happening across the board.

“We live in the best country in the world and the best locations come at a price because everyone wants to live there,” he said.

“So the issue in these lifestyle meccas for first home buyers is the savings deposit hurdle.

“But this belies the real underlying issue — our entitled expectations.”

He said most people were missing a “massive opportunity” by believing they had to own the home they lived in.

According to property expert Bushy Martin, Australia definitely does not have a housing affordability issue. Picture: Supplied

And he said our “instant iPhone everything world” was at least partly to blame, with people expecting to get everything they wanted immediately without putting in the hard yards.

But Mr Martin pointed to his own experience as an example of how to buck the trend.

He and his wife Sonya both started with nothing following previous relationship breakdowns before amassing an international portfolio of 12 properties together.

They achieved it by rentvesting — or investing in affordable properties outside of where they actually wanted to live, and then renting in their chosen location.

“We recognised pretty early on that having a mortgage and putting a dirty great noose around our necks and living on dog food and baked beans for 30 years probably wasn’t the way to get ahead,” he said.

“We made a conscious decision to rent in the location of our choice at a fraction of what we’d have paid in a mortgage, and we started putting all our energy into investing our income into assets — we bought property in affordable, fringe areas on the outskirts of Adelaide.”

He said it all came down to a question of “lifestyle versus loanstyle”.

“If we want the dream home in the dream location now, we need to compromise on lifestyle,” he explained.

“Or you can choose to enjoy a better lifestyle now by securing a lesser starter home further away.”
He said many Aussies needed to learn to “separate access from ownership” and realise we don’t necessarily have to own the best house in the best suburb in order to be “living the dream”.

Mr Martin stressed that while he was qualified to talk about property and finance, he was not a financial planner or accountant, and that people should talk to professionals before making major financial decisions to make sure it suits their risk profile.

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