I’m a boomer. Let’s talk property and the new generational shift

As a boomer, it took a while to appreciate why my daughter and her partner wanted to buy their first home two hours outside Sydney.

Illustration: Glen Le Lievre

The share economy arrived in the property market in 2008 when Airbnb decided to make use of spare rooms, investment flats and holiday houses. The property pivot arrived last year when the young and agile decided to disrupt traditional models of home ownership.

As a boomer, it took me a while to appreciate why my daughter and her partner were looking to buy their first home two hours outside of Sydney and in a condition and location that would appeal to Airbnb users.

“Don’t you want a shabby old house that you can renovate, then sell and repeat the exercise until you end up with a house you actually want to live in? That’s how us boomers got to be the landlords of the nation and the kicking horse of younger generations.”

She refrained from kicking my shins and explained the plan.

They’ll live and work from a home outside of the city while the post-COVID period unfolds. After a few years, they might have to move back to the city and rent/bunk with parents/possibly buy and use the first home as an Airbnb and their occasional weekender.

So they were looking for a first home but also holiday home, investment property and capital store while using the parents’ spare rooms to fill in the gaps. That’s a pivot with a pirouette and occasional penche.

This agile approach to bricks and mortar is shared by many in their generation, according to a survey by ING Australia. A third of young property hunters want to work and rent in the city while owning in a holiday home. Others are planning to invest in regional cities, rural lifestyle locations or on the edge of the big cities.

It’s easy to see the reasoning once you remove the boomer spectacles. Interest rates are so low you can repay a $1 million mortgage for the same rent as an inner city terrace; capital city prices are booming if you don’t want to buy a flat (and post-COVID no one does) and the work-from-home option is writ large on job postings, if not written in stone.

But it’s the mindset of the first property buyers (we shouldn’t assume they are first home buyers) that is the most compelling force in the reimagining of the property market.

This is the generation that grew up sharing cars and rides; that travels the world in rented rooms; that trades their furniture on digital marketplaces whenever they move house; that works in gigs, holds side hustles and never stays long in so-called permanent jobs.

They share, they stream, play with strangers, store their stuff on the cloud, socialise online and if you let them keep their phones, they can walk out of their lives without a suitcase. For a long time, they thought they’d never get the chance to join the landed gentry and many never wanted to join those ranks if it meant living like them.

They’re doing it now in a way that won’t just disrupt the property market but will disrupt old notions of what property is for. How does a country community feel when buyers with capital city wages buy up in a town with regional house prices? What happens when a coastal village becomes a dormitory suburb? Are the highways leading into cities capable of carrying commuters, even if they are occasional commuters? More fundamentally, the generation that has perfected the pivot will force us to ask what it means to live in a place if you’re not there half the time and how do you call a place home if it carries so many different shingles.