Don’t get stressed at not being on the housing ladder – play the long game and enjoy your freedom
IREMEMBER the day one of my friends first mentioned buying a house. We were all in our mid-20s. She was a year younger than me. I thought she was insane.
Why would anyone, my other friends and I wondered, want to take on a mortgage? How did you even go about asking for one? We were barely managing to pay our rent. In my apartment, we often had no electricity because my flatmate and I did not have the cash for the bill. The flat we had was shabby and faded; we ate pasta and pesto every night. And we didn’t mind. It was the way things were. Our wages were pitiful. She was a trainee barrister, I was a junior reporter.
We wanted enough money to pay for the last pint in the local pub and to go out with our work friends on Fridays. We wanted to feel we could go anywhere we wanted in the next fortnight, that we could drop everything and move on with just a brief note to the landlord. And we trusted in the system – that one day things would change and we’d settle down. But not now, we said. Now would be crazy.
Of course, in hindsight, we were the insane ones. My friend duly scrimped and saved and got her mortgage, buying a teensy flat for what proved to be a hilariously tiny sum. The Celtic Tiger set in, she sold the well-located flat and was well set up to get herself a decent place. She was clever and wellorganised and I remain in awe of her sheer common sense. But, personally, I am also glad I stayed flexible. I did leave the country and I wouldn’t have missed those wonderful ex-patriate years for any red-brick terrace in Dublin. And through it all, I stayed in a succession of under-sized, unpretty flats.
When today’s 20-somethings fret about the fact that they have zero hope of getting a foot on the property ladder, do they realise many of their elders were locked out of it too, right into their 30s?
College graduates had terrible jobs in the 1990s. I remember toying with an offer of a £7,000-a-year (€8,150) salary in a London book publisher, which incongruously came with gym membership. I decided it would be better to go back to college. True, things have gotten worse in recent years, with the average age of the first-time house buyer now at 34, compared to 29 just 10 years ago. Things are tough, for sure. But the disparity between modern 20-somethings’ experiences and the experience of those now firmly established in housing, may not be as great as some imagine.
I write this in the awareness that millennials everywhere have been
scandalised by news a 35-year-old Australian millionaire last week rudely accused them of wasting their money on nonsense instead of working all hours or saving for a house.
Tim Gurner, a property developer from Melbourne, was interviewed on the ‘60 Minutes’ show, and he pointed out that when he was saving for his first home, he wasn’t “buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each”.
“We’re at a point now where the expectations of younger people are very, very high. We are coming into a new reality where… a lot of people won’t own a house in their lifetime. That is just the reality.”
One can only hope he is wrong about that. At only 35, he sounds decidedly smug.
The thing is, there is a certain logic to what he says. So many 20-something Irish people appear stressed and frustrated by the fact they cannot afford to get on the housing ladder. I can’t help wanting to say to them – life is long. Your day will come. Enjoy your freedom while you have it.