I hate moneyed-up Millennials as much as they hate Boomers like me

People complain a lot about my generation. For good reason. Free love, free education, nearly free medical care. Plus – the opportunity to put together a deposit for a home with just one year’s savings! Practically free in comparison to today’s lot of first home buyers who would need to triple the 1993 (why 1993? Hold that thought) household income to do the same. Takes them six years – at least!

I’m sympathetic. Or I was until a week ago. Now it turns out that people like me, bad Boomers, 2 million of us, are in direct competition with middle-class Millennials. Those same people, grumpy at Boomers and older Gen X-ers, are right to be extremely concerned about how their generation of young families is ever going to buy a house.

I was sympathetic towards Millennials, until a week go. Credit: SMH

But now my generation is failing, too. Failing to downsize. And I can only blame moneyed-up Millennials. At every auction for spacious two-bedroom homes, you’ll see two distinct groups. The young people with wealthy parents in pocket. Those folks have a multitude of tools at the ready: going guarantor, providing some or all of the deposit, some or all of the house. They are loaded. They even own other properties. I hate them as much as Millennials hate Boomers.

And then the second group? Failed downsizers. Like me. Our hopes and aspirations for our more diminutive lives are not so different from the hopes and aspirations of first home buyers. Space. A garden. No dungeons.

Michael Blythe, former Reserve Banker, former chief economist at the Commonwealth Bank, has a new gig in line with the time of his life, a project called Downsizer.com. He’s just writing up the findings of the company’s latest research and says there are now 1.9 million downsizers, two-thirds of whom are between 60 and 70, willing, able or aspiring to sell the family home.

But they have lived in their houses for 20, 30, 40 years. And they want the same amenity. They are also discovering that what they buy might not leave as much left over from the sale of the family homes as they hoped.

Plus they have the dining table problem.

I went to an auction a week ago to buy a house half the size of the one I live in. I spent hours doing inspections, tape measure in hand. Would our existing dining table fit? If it didn’t, how would we feed everyone all at once. We regularly have our kids and grandkids – 11 people – at dinner. High chairs take up a lot of room.

Here’s what happened next. A zillion people registered to bid. Six, actually. The house went for nearly $700,000 more than the price at which it was first “guided”, although to the agent’s credit, it was revised upwards as the auction date approached. The two bidders remaining at the end of the brisk auction were doing it for their adult children.

The other four were failed downsizers. We will probably all end up in retirement villages, though judging from my quick conversations with others, no one is actually retired.

Turns out downsizers are too fussy – or, as Blythe says, they have too many wants, not enough resources. We want our big houses without having the work of the big houses. We want spare cash to top up our super. In 2018, the then federal government, led by Malcolm Turnbull with Scott Morrison as treasurer (and who knows what else!) invented the downsizer contribution. From the sale of your family home, each spouse could top up existing superannuation accounts with $300,000. Take-up has been pretty slow, despite the fact most Boomers were already in their 30s in 1992 when mandatory superannuation kicked in.

The first year it was available, 6000 people topped up; by June 2022, another 20,000, averaging around $250,000. The latest figures for the June 2023 financial year are incomplete – but there’s no reason the increase in downsizer contributions should go against the trend of tripling every three years, with a special boost between 2021 and 2022. I’m guessing some parents completely freaked out about children and home ownership as interest rates soared in that tough year. They wanted to help and the only way to access help was to ditch the family home.

Anyhow, it’s a nightmare out there. Reminds me of the auction in which we bought our house in 1993. Developers, would-be developers, second home buyers. And us.

My beloved husband tells me I’m too pessimistic. That we aren’t failed downsizers, merely frustrated downsizers. I’m feeling the whole sympathy-for-Millennials thing right now.

In 1993, we got lucky and we’ve been lucky. Our house has given us a space for more joy than even I could have hoped for (and I constantly hope for more joy). I hope to God it goes to another good home (owner). And I cross my fingers and toes that I’ll find something with no dungeons and a tiny garden. And space for a big dining table.

Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist.