Will they ever own a home The scariest thing about having adult kids
When my kids were little I had two fears: meningococcal and choking. The first never happened but the second did, when my daughter turned blue eating roast lamb and her dad had to knock out her front teeth to save her.
They got older, the fears changed. Bad festival drugs, getting king hit, undiagnosed STDs. Mistaking broken hearts for an incurable illness, motorbike crashes, a sergeant’s flat voice across a desk.
Fearing for your children’s safety is replaced by other fears when they grow up.Credit:Elise Derwin
They moved out, the fears lessened. What was to worry about? They were armed with degrees, knew how to ski, drive manual cars and use power drills, had lovely partners and exciting career paths.
Yet here I am, snapping awake lately with one thought: how will my kids ever buy a home?
Figures showing median house prices in Melbourne and Sydney are over $1 million don’t have me rubbing my homeowner hands with glee. More like wringing them with despair.
Prices jump daily by over $1000. Outstripping surgeons’ incomes. Where will our adult children live and raise families, especially in a post-pandemic world where it will be on them to repay billions to the public purse?
Back in the day, my kids’ dad and I debated what would give them the best future: private schools or putting the same money into buying them a property. We couldn’t really afford either but chose education that they could spin into lives of their choice.
Ha. I wonder if we’d make the same sliding doors choice today.
Should young adults keep saving for a house or is home ownership unachievable?Credit: Peter Rae
The warning bell. At a 2015 party my banker friend Kay said if millennials wanted to own real estate, they had to save at home until at least 28. Kay, sorry for politely grimacing then going off to dance to Young Hearts Run Free.
I’ve never been short on mother advice (put your left arm up to stop a coughing fit, super pretty blondes flame out fast) but now I’m stumped. I don’t know whether to tell them to keep saving another zillion years for a deposit or that the pressure of home ownership is too high a price to pay.
Even if they manage the Herculean feat of getting into the market, the stonking mortgage repayments mean yes, you have a living room but can’t afford to leave it.
The bank of mum and dad is the popular solution, but my kids know it’s not an option until we’re dead. They were told early on the education was it. Make the most of it. No cars, no paid holidays once they were adults. Definitely no houses â€" hilarious.
Maybe it’s better to rent forever and build wealth via other investments, a la the European way. But then they don’t have the same security in an unpredictable rental market which offers the opposite of a decades-long rental in a Paris pied-à -terre.
None of my grandparents ever owned property. My parents bought a brick veneer in Glen Waverley in 1971 for $26,000, which was $6000 more than their combined salaries. There was room in the budget for cashews and after dinner mints at Saturday night parties.
My first place was in West Footscray, a Californian bungalow with an endless backyard. We paid $122,000, about one and a half times what we earned in a year.
It was so manageable we soon brought home a custom red sofa and a baby son. Friends were wary of the neighbourhoodâ€"one dinner, future mogul Antony Catalano checked his car every hour even though it had a Club lockâ€"but we were on the property ladder and away.
Those proportions of salary to house price are impossible for our big kids. Their first home owner market sees prices of up to 10 times their salaries, almost impossible if you’re single.
I don’t know how, but we need fabulous public housing, more affordable places to buy that won’t fall apart in five years, and governments to take charge of what is fast becoming a generational heartache. Certainly a parental one.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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