● Heather du Plessis-Allan
Areport this week has shown a dramatic reversal in housing affordability in the Auckland market but, along with the good news, came some bad.
Despite the fact housing affordability has improved 26 per cent since the giddy, overheated heights of 2015, Auckland is still considered one of the least affordable housing markets in the developed world, with a median house price of $850,000 — 8.3 times the median household income.
So does that mean young people are doomed to rent for the rest of their lives? Not according to my listeners, who came out in their droves to tell us how they’d bought their first homes.
And guess what? They weren’t trust fund babies, or young people looking for the Bank of Mum and Dad to bankroll them. It was the same way we all did it. They set goals, saved, did without, prioritised their spending. And after a couple of years of graft, they were turning the key of the door of their first home.
Turns out there’s not much difference between Boomers and Millennials after all. And most of our young home buyers realised pretty early on that they would have to compromise before they could realise their dream.
One young woman told her husband her bottom line was three bedrooms and two bathrooms. After a few weeks of open homes, she realised they couldn’t afford the two bathrooms. So she reset her bottom line and six months later, the couple owned their own home.
Philip and his brother wanted to buy an apartment in Auckland city but although they had saved enough for a deposit, it wasn’t enough to buy what they wanted. Also, Philip’s brother lived overseas and the banks didn’t like that. So, after crunching numbers, Philip worked out they could get a mortgage on 10 per cent if they built from new
— and they could afford to pay the mortgage if they built it out of the main centre. Now, the pair are proud owners of a new rental in Hamilton.
Another young man in his early 20s, with a partner and a young child, wanted a three-bedroom house in Wellington with a big backyard. They ended up miles away in Wainuiomata, but as he said, they’re on the first rung of the housing ladder and they’re still relatively young.
Story after story came through from young property owners and the proud parents of young property owners — men and women who weren’t looking for a handout, who weren’t looking to blame previous generations for the high cost of housing. They were sensible, practical young people who cut their coat to suit their cloth, who lowered their expectations when reality set in, who were willing to forego travel and to move back in with their parents to save what they needed to achieve their home ownership dream.
They were paying back the mortgage faster than they needed to and some of the young couples, two who rang were in their early 30s, were mortgage free — in one case, because they took a flatmate.
The quiet Kiwis who are getting on and succeeding, who are ignoring negative headlines, and taking their futures into their own hands rather than relying on other people to make their futures for them, are alive and well and thriving. It was wonderful to have an opportunity to celebrate them.