Things that shit me. Old people who think young people who can’t get a house “Just aren’t working hard enough”.
I was watching a tik tok video where some old guy did exactly that. Then some young dude came on and said something to the effect of “yeah whatever, he’ll be dead soon.” The guy that shared it seemed to be around my age and was horrified at the young fellows reaction to this. He’s right it WAS a disrepectful response but I kinda sided with the young guy and said “respect goes both ways”. This old guy basically called an entire generation of young people lazy.
Here in lies my problem: When I got my first real job (in the late 90’s) I could have bought a house with around 4 x times my annual salary. I was a cleaner and I didn’t even do 8 hours a day… If i recall it was around 6.
The same house (yes i do follow real estate reasonably closely and especially the areas I grew up in) would now be worth around $700k and you’d be lucky to get it for 14 x the same salary for the same job adjusted up for todays incomes. My son who’s now a young adult with a full time job has no hope in hell of either saving up to get that deposit or even paying it off on the salary he’s on.
Its not just the money amount. On a 4 x annual salary the house didn’t take up 60% of your income. If you were real keen and put 60% of your income into it, you could pay it off real quick. If you lost your job there was room to move. Paying off an undertaking like a modern mortgage will mean doing it tough for 30 years for anyone on a non executive level salary. If you have any life dramas like kids, sickness, career downtime you could quite easily fall behind on your house and never be able to regain your position.
So really, why the f–k would you bother? Why not just work, enjoy your life and if you’re smart keep some savings on hand so when the real estate market falls (which i’ve predicted here before and it has started to fall around 10% for the upper end of the market*) buy in, or failing that move to another country with realistic house prices which you could pay for in cash. But there’s no point in killing yourself to pay off a house that you’ll likely never own. You’re just wasting the gift of your life. It leaves me astounded that some older folks who with the benefit of their wisdom cannot see this.
Someone made the point: “Well who’s going to lay the bricks and build these houses? The problem with kids these days is they don’t know the value of hard work” Maybe I’m wrong here but I would never say to my kid, bust your spine laying bricks or concrete or whatever for a wage which would never allow you to buy your own place and then by the time your 50 you’ll have your spine falling out your ass, and basically be a cripple. True enough people have done so for many years, but those people had a fair chance at buying a place to live. So by this point if you don’t own your home outright you’re basically f–ked. If someone needs bricks laid so bad, they can either a) do it themselves or b) pay someone a reasonable wage for the effort involved.
* When I say market falls, at this point the higher end of the market has definitely fallen here in Australia. The low to middle end has been hit to some degree but not as much. I’d say a 40% drop is needed to bring in back into the realms of realism for a person to actually pay off.
Further reading for those interested: Housing Affordability Parliamentary Study
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