THE ITEM BLOCKING FIRST-HOME BUYERS
SOARING coffee prices have reignited the smashed avo debate, with a financial data group warning the morning cuppa may be one thing aspiring homebuyers have to forgo if they want a roof over their heads.
Factors including unfavourable weather in Brazil and shipping nightmares caused wholesale coffee prices to almost double last year.
And the beloved bean is set to get even pricier, with world production forecast to fall this year while consumption rises.
In 2016, renowned demographer and The Australian columnist Bernard Salt wrote “the evils of hipster cafes” were part of the reason young people struggled to purchase their first home, saying he’d “seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbed feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more”.
A year later, property tycoon Tim Gurner hit international headlines for making a similar remark. And now Grafa chief executive Heidi Cuthbert has waded into those same waters.
“With the price of coffee almost doubling in a year, it’s going to put pressure on the finances of urban, coffee-drinking city dwellers who are saving for a big-ticket item, like a house or a car,” she said on Friday.
“The price of your next cuppa at the local coffee shop or the beans you buy at the supermarket are likely going to hit your hip pocket.”
She said the group most likely to be affected was young people living in urban areas and already confronted with the double challenge of high city rents and rising property prices.
“Foregoing the morning brew may be a necessary sacrifice to save for a deposit,” Ms Cuthbert said.
“Every coffee you drink is pushing that dream home ever further away.”
Her comments come as new
Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed the average mortgage for owner-occupier dwellings surging to a record $596,000 in November.
But rising fixed lending rates, affordability constraints and slow population growth would create “a much softer housing market in 2022”, CBA Economics senior economist Kristina Clifton said, with dwelling prices expected to go backwards next year.
CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless said on Thursday that Australia’s two biggest capital city markets, Sydney and Melbourne, could hit their peak later this year.