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Most people in their 20s and 30s will never buy a home.

 

Conversation in the late 20’s/early 30’s age bracket revolves a lot around ‘settling down’.

Some are, some aren’t. Some will. Some would rather squirt a searing hot bottle of breastmilk into their eye rather than sign a mortgage. (I like those ones.)

Either way, our preoccupation with the directionally confusing act of Growing Up and Settling Down is probably because it’s more difficult to master than ever before. Why?

We just can’t afford it.

In this weekend’s Saturday Paper, Clem Bastow wrote about the ‘Argument of broken dreams’.

An argument, in short, played out between the stalwart Baby Boomers and their selfish Gen Y offspring about their propensity to live The Great Australian Dream – that is, find a partner, buy a house, and settle down.

(Or was it buy a partner, find a house, and refuse to settle for anything less than perfect?)

Bastow struck a chord when she systematically unpacked exactly WHY this Great Australian Dream of homeownership is now the Great Australian Anxiety. In one part, she points out that Sydney and Melbourne are the 2nd and 4th least affordable housing markets, globally.

Globally.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Pops.

As Bastow laments the ‘death rattle’ of the home owners dream, she touched on a more pervasive and long term issue: if ‘settling down’ means buying a home, and buying a home is too expensive…how are we expected to settle?

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The Great Aussie dream is now the enemy of those trying to 'settle down'.

Growing up in the white picket fence wonderland of suburban Brisbane in the early 90's, there was never any doubt in my mind what 'adulthood' meant. It meant a husband, children, plastic toys in the backyard, redecorating the living room every few years, and a man called John who mows the lawn on a Tuesday.

The mountainous terrain of adulthood seemed scary for reasons that ended up being so far from the reality: as a kid, I was worried about choosing a nice name for my daughter that also started with 'M', and learning how to drive.

(As an adult, I now realise that the former is the realm of reality television stars - your clue begins with 'K' -  and the latter? Well, that still hasn't happened.)

Oh no, the perils of settling down in 2016 are far more difficult to overcome than a reverse park.

And I'm not alone in my fear for leaving my parent's suburban shoes unfilled.

A whole generation of suburban brats have been spat out with champagne tastes on a beer budget. Jennifer Rayer is one, and as she wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald, she's all-too-ready to replace her VB with a glass of Moet.

"By the age of 30, my mum and dad were settled, prosperous parents of three; homeowners, tenured workers tucking away super and long-service leave, and possessors of both everyday and special-occasion cutlery," she writes.

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"....I never doubted that my friends and I would lead lives that eclipsed theirs. I assumed we'd continue the golden trend tracing back to the Great Depression, yet another Australian generation to enjoy more wealth and opportunity than our parents did.

In my own 30th year, I doubt it now."

Why do we keep pushing this impossible dream on struggling young people?

All around me, friends are dropping like flies as they get caught up in the sticky web of mortgages and even stickier fingers of little people who need space, space, space.

Their trendy inner-city warehouse apartments go from being a steal at $500/week, to a veritable death trap of 4th floor windows and non-baby-friendly carpets that may or may not house traces of narcotics.

"It's time to settle down," they gleefully proclaim with a fistful of baby wipes and a car boot of pram attachments. Off they trot to the leafy, tree-lined streets of inner suburbia - still within proximity of decent coffee and a semi-cool wine bar - ready to settle down. Ready and waiting.

And then the reality of the Aussie housing market meets them at the front gate to smile, offer a scone, and politely tell them that they cannot afford it around here. Sorry, darling.

The act of Settling Down is needing an image overhaul as young couples and families struggle to reconcile their great Australian nightmare with what was meant to be the great Australian dream.

"We need to redefine what it means to settle down," wrote Brigid Delaney in The Guardian, "....There’s this and so much about the story of housing in Australia that we need to let go."

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In her article, Brigid Delaney also highlights a growing Gen Y despair at their Baby Boomer parents selling up their 32 perches of inner-suburban space, for a smaller perch somewhere groovy. Somewhere groovy with less carpet to vacuum and hopefully no grass to mow. Who's the selfish generation now, huh?

"The reality is that many of us won’t enjoy the standard of housing – and the space – enjoyed by our parents," says Delaney.

"In order to enjoy this standard (even if only temporarily) we need to go “home.” There’s nostalgia for the family home, but there’s also a whole generation of sad cases like myself who live the housing dream through their parents." - The Guardian

Our olds are likely to be the last herd of cattle through the gates in terms of affordable housing. And our slightly pathetic dependance on their own slice of the Bloody Great Australian Dream only reiterates the importance of redefining exactly what that is.

The 'Baby Boomers' might just be the last generation who could afford their own house and land without significant struggle.

It's not that our generation is opposed to change.

We're cool with trading in a taxi for an Uber, we haven't driven to collect our Chinese takeaway in years, and when we travel? We stay in a stranger's Air Bnb-listed home. And use their cutlery. And wee in their toilet. And it's FINE.

With the world moving faster than ever before, isn't it about time our vision of 'settling down' caught up? The nuclear family structure is shifting and evolving, and careers frog leap from role to role - and city to city - every few years.

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Outdated narratives of decades with same company, or redecorating your living room every few years, or having a lawn for someone called John to mow - well, they are no longer relevant.

Like Clem Bastow, I'm up to my eyeballs in this 'argument of broken dreams'. Our generation works longer and harder than ever before, in addition to juggling anxiety-inducing online lives, increasingly expensive social lives, and a love life that probably spent it's incubation in the falsities of a smartphone dating app. Man, shit is HARD.

The last thing we need to push on our already fatigued agenda is trying to figure out how to afford a house.

To again quote Brigid Delaney, "Owning your own home (getting the deposit, making the repayments) is now so stressful and out of reach of most people, it should no longer be used as a marker to say “you are now a proper adult.”

"Our expectations and sense of entitlement about the amount of space we need also has to change."

In an article for The Sydney Morning Herald title, 'Gen Y frets over looming bleak future', Jennifer Rayner specifically outlays the increasing struggles of the younger generations. The average mortgage, she points out, has ballooned from $81,000 in 1985, to $308,000 today. Oh, and without the huge returns enjoyed by homeowners over the past 20 years, because the cost of servicing such massive mortgages will mostly cancel these out.

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"All this eats at our mental and emotional health," she adds.

"According to  an Australian Bureau of Statistics' Australian health survey, more than 37 per cent of people under 24 and almost 30 per cent of people between 25 and 34 are white-knuckling through their days in moderate to extreme psychological distress.

The Department of Health reckons the prevalence of mental-health issues such as depression and anxiety may be up to three times higher among young Australians than across the community as a whole."

Cripes.

Watch the Mamamia 'Property Complaints Hotline' below. (Post continues after video)


Going against the grain is hard enough. Going against a deeply ingrained national legend of The Great Australian Dream is even harder.

But if we can get used to peeing in a stranger's toilet, then we can surely overcome this, too.

 

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