I was in a bidding war for a unit with concrete cancer. I’m still mad I lost

I just got outbid on my seventh attempt to buy an apartment in Sydney, and with every property I miss out on, my standards drop. Not that they were that high to begin with.

The first place I tried to buy was a modest 1970s flat in Ashfield. My parents had flown up from Melbourne for support. The auction was over in minutes – it sold for $210,000 more than the original price guide (and, incidentally, $200,000 over my budget) which was more than double its previous sale price from 15 years ago.

Competition for rental property in Sydney is intense, and so we queue for a home to buy.

Attempting to join the property ladder is a soul-destroying process. Sydney’s median house price hit a new peak of $1.6 million in December, a 10.6 per cent increase from the year before. It means the longer you spend looking, the less attainable homeownership becomes.

Studios I’d originally dismissed as too cruel to keep my cat in suddenly appeal. Termites and concrete cancer don’t dissuade me. I’ve started to find the depressing shade of grey that developers are so fond of for carpets, tiles and benchtops somewhat comforting.

More than half of all buildings in the state have serious defects, a recent survey by the Building Commission NSW and Strata Community Association NSW found, and serious defects in Mascot Towers, Opal Tower and Macquarie Park mean you have to have some appetite for risk to be a Sydney homeowner.

I went in with this mindset for the third property I tried to buy. The building had concrete cancer on the balconies, but the real estate agent told me that was the only defect and was being rectified. For the first time, I made the highest offer.

When I insisted on a professional building inspection, the agent suddenly remembered there were water leaks in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The seller went with a lower offer, simply because the other buyer didn’t want to look behind the scenes. They’d had a previous buyer back out due to the extent of the problems and didn’t want to risk it again.

The process wouldn’t be anywhere near as soul-destroying if there was any hope in the rental market. Australia’s vacancy rate has been at a record low for months, at 0.8 per cent. Posts in Facebook groups to join existing share houses are inundated with messages, with ads closed off within hours due to demand. Hundreds of people join competitive queues to view rental properties, some sending AirTaskers to wait in line for them.

Sydney’s median asking rent is $680 for a unit and $730 for a house, according to Domain, a 17.2 per cent increase from the previous year. It means someone with a $550,000 mortgage today would only be paying $130 more a week to pay off a unit than to rent one. Data from private analytics company PropTrack found more than a third of homes are cheaper to buy than rent across the country.

After 12 years of renting, that fact hurts.

I’m in an incredibly privileged position to even consider purchasing a property. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve pursued a career, worked hard and saved carefully, but it’s because my parents are helping me with the deposit – I wouldn’t be considering buying without their help.

As NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey wrote in this masthead this month, inherited privilege is “catching education as a predictor for who will gather the most assets from a lifetime of work”.

It no longer matters how studious you were, how many degrees you have (with 2023 HECs debt increases limiting borrowing power even further), or how hard you work “Having parents and grandparents with a property portfolio is beginning to matter more than getting a degree,” wrote Mookhey.

And yet, even with this privilege, homeownership is almost impossible for anyone from my generation in Sydney.

The process is brutal. There’s the time wasted combing through listings and attending viewings between work calls, and the financial stress of paying for multiple contract reviews and building reports and penny-pinching to increase an offer.

Then there’s the emotional stress of scrutinising strata reports, googling public transport options and imagining a new life in our first-ever home. Real estate agents play mind games, lie about defects and undervalue the property to drive up competition.

After a meagre 10-minute inspection, we commit to the most expensive decision of our lives only to find out we never had a chance in the first place. Faceless investors bidding over the phone will always win.

With stagnant wages, soaring prices and unmet promises of the housing bubble bursting, I keep thinking something in Sydney has to give. But the longer I wait, the worse the market gets – and the more desperate I become.

Amber Schultz is a reporter for The Sun-Herald in Sydney.

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