Buying a house

I feel really guilty when people who are our peers ask for advice about saving enough money to have a house deposit. I bought my first apartment before the boom and we’ve been in our current neighbourhood for the last 10 years (before it gentrified). I can’t offer any real advice on saving a six figure deposit because I only needed an amount I could save and/or scrape up from my assets at 23 and it’s disingenuous to turn around and tell them to move to a lower cost of living area when they have kids and want to be near their families and good schools.

So my tip is, don’t. If it’s ridiculous to buy then wait. It’s not a real and sustainable situation where families can’t buy then rent for a while. Assess other suburbs, assess other living situations and wait to see what happens. At the moment the Australian house boom is built on the idea that the baby boomers have all got lower superannuation bonuses but they’ve got valuable family homes and investment units that they can sell to release capital as they get older.

This asset base will come up for sale. It has to and it’ll be in the next 10 years or so as they need to top up these low retirement savings. So rent where you want to live and know that demographics are on your side.