Premium suburbs bear brunt as real estate market reels.
"At auctions across tree-lined streets in Toorak, Brighton and Kew, bidders are keeping hands in pockets, with auctioneers forced to pass in homes and hope. "I would say there has been a 10% to 15% fall."
Local agent Richard Mackinnon, from Bennison Mackinnon, referring to those suburbs.
Be strong, children. Think of the plight and thank your lucky stars and moons that you're not so unfortunate as to be selling a five-bedroom bungalow in Toorak!
I know, I know: shame on me, these people worked their whole lives, mortgage stress, etc, but hearing about 4-bedroom house going for "only" a million bucks after years of baby-boomer bubbling, completely fails to make me reach for the hanky. Being told almost weekly that my generation is one that will never be able to afford a house has hardened my impecunious heart somewhat.
Except for you, Kath. You go, girl. Gouge those finnicketty buggers.
***
GTH - Last post's picture was of Mele's Nonno's greenhouse and his homemade tools. Nonno died last year, but he left behind an amazing culture of love and respect among his family and through the stories they tell, the pictures they show and the things he left around the farm. I wanted specifically to say with this picture that not all death is pointless, leaving nothing. It can be delicate and beautiful and personal. Points to everybody who had a go.
Having recently one of the new Gen's to have bought a house; I'm not surprised at the plight of people not being able to buy a house. There's a lot of costs outside of simply the mortgage that need to be taken into account when making such a purchase - insurance, water, maintenance, etc. I bought the house by myself, no partner to share the burdon, no parents to back me up with money (I never expected it). It's true, I work in a company, industry, position that pays relatively decent salary, but of course going back to your previous blog I had to spend 4 years at university, unlike some of my peers that began work when they were 16 and began earning money, with inflation and some great saving could be in relatively the same position I am now.
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky, I bought just before the last interest rate rise, and have since seen three rate drops, which I thought meant people would be buying houses flat out, but due to the uncertainty people are getting scared. Again, the rich get richer, and the poor poorer due to the fact that the rich are the only people that can afford to buy a house, second, third, or fourth house and rent them out to poor mugs that can afford to pay half the mortgage for them.
Damn you rich people!
GTH: A stone constructed drain where people who cannot afford the rent hikes, purchasing, or a tent may go for some accomodation in hard times. Are we falling into stoneage franzy - caves and all that?
Actually, I know you've bought a house and I've got an ENORMOUS amount of respect (and, hey, let's face it: jealousy!) for people our age and younger who take the big step and buy a house.
ReplyDeleteI'm just currently feeling bummed because I'm still studying, reading about how I'll never do this and that and then reading a headline which, when I originally read it last night, read "Wealthier suburbs feel the pinch" and then talked about how people who own five bedroom houses are worrying about the reduced returns on their bricks and mortar investments.
And you're right - how many of these poor, poor folks own other properties which they rent out to poor schmucks like me?
I've met people like 'them'. Some are greedy people, other's are people who have made great business decisions and life decisions. Some have put off personal happiness instead focussing on money. Some are the people that have been born into money and are hence pricks.
ReplyDeleteYou are rich Franzy. Rich, in knowing you've probably had a bigger impact on more people's lives due to the fact you actually care about others. Your impact may be in your book reviews, your blogs, your interestingly constructed end of season write ups, your overall sarcasm, it may even be in your unusual barista face expresssions given to Queenslands that speak with poor english.
Trust me Franzy, you're not the poorest person I know. Poorer than some monetary style. But Rich with life! You tell us, what do you consider more important. Nah, don't do that, we already know. Fkn Hippie!
Ahem... we have an investment property but we're always fair about the rent and about inspections. In fact we're suckers really and we can't face raising the rent even by $5 when really it should of gone up $150 by now
ReplyDeleteBut please diss away. I used to when I rented :)
REM, I believe, initially wanted to be called Reagans Trolls as a band name in honor of the people forced to live under bridges by his economic policies...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if that relates to the header, but I like that the other one out of Savage Garden and the one who wasn't Charli in Hi-5 couldn't sell their house...hopefully a bridge is calling...
Shippy - Yeah, I know - I'm wealthy as.
ReplyDeleteI made Kath an extremely generous offer for her place, but she still turned it down!
Squib - And diss I shall! "Should of"?!? "Should of"?!? "Should have"!
But seriously, what am I going to complain about? I don't rent because all the good houses are snapped up by speculators, I rent because the gap between rent payments and mortgage payments is a chasm I can't reach across on a long-term student's income.
Miles - Is it economic policies which have made housing unaffordable? Or something deeper?
How does Nonno's greenhouse and homemade tools fit with the Bali bombers execution post? Each picture relates to the post, but I can't see the connection?
ReplyDeleteI'll never be able to afford a house either without a huge lotto win. Still, at least I have a respectable place to live and enough food.
You know, I've heard all this before.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1980's when I first started work, I too was LOOKING THROUGH A TUNNEL TO NOWHERE. The commonly accepted wisdom back in about 1984 was that nobody in their 20's would EVER, EVER be able to afford do buy their own house.
Time, salaries and inflation marched on. House prices moved up, down and sideways. T'other half and I didn't buy a house, we bought a small unit that was affordable and lived there for over 5 years.
When we built where we now live (and we built 20 years ago), interest rates were at 17.5%. We both worked. We had to. Every cent I earned paid the house loan. If either of us lost our jobs (and there were some touch and go moments there as well) then we were in the crapper.
By the mid 1990's, interest rates were coming down but we kept the payments the same. We paid the house off in 8 years. We also did all the landscaping ourselves, and had no carpets at all for 7 years. No curtains for 4 years.
Oh how things have changed:
http://ashleigh.id.au/?p=732
And NOBODY wants to move into a house unless its fully furnished.
Well, harder times were only 20 years ago. We got through them. Houses became affordable.
It will happen again.
See this one as well:
http://ashleigh.id.au/?p=718
That was beautiful Ashleigh. The caps lock bit.
ReplyDeleteIt is a massive gap between renting and buying. Scary massive.
River: I think Franzy's relation to Nonno's garden shed was a pretty deep header, hence why he gave points to all guesses. I can guess that in death he was trying to say, in death it's the small things that can be noticed and really mean a lot long after the fact, sometimes death is pointless (in this case) and nothing comes of it, it doesn't achieve anything.
Franz I'm a great believer in descriptive as opposed to prescriptive grammar (except when I feel like being a pedantic pain in the arse, a mood I enjoy mostly at dinnertime with my teenage daughter)
ReplyDeleteRiver - Please see my publicist, Shippy, below, for an answer.
ReplyDeleteAshleigh - Look, this post was initially about the negative reaction I had to a news article asking me to feel some sense of sympathy for wealthy, inner-city land owners. If they bought their houses any more than five or ten years ago, then those houses have at least doubled in value.
Hence the title: "Boo Fucking Hoo". Cry me a river, swab my bleeding heart, fetch me a Kleenex factory and set up the electron microscope so that I may play the world's tiniest violin.
Yes - you're absolutely right. All of the posts you linked were right: people are greedy. Really greedy. Fully furnished homes! Perfectly proportioned! Stuffed with expensive technology and debt! Environmental Cancer Palaces with no warranty reaching past 15 years!
But also into this category falls the accounting manager from Toorak pushing out his big bottom lip because instead of the projected $1.1 million for his multi-bedroom manor, he barely broke the cool mill'.
He's not out on the street. He's not moving an hour and a half's travel from work.
He's doing just fine.
And just while I think of it, Shippy is right, when you choose to be a student (like me), there isn't a gap between renting and owning that can be plugged by hard work and sacrifice. There's nothing. There's only renting.
Shippy - Well said, ol' bean.
Squib - Papa?
Ashleigh (again) - I'm sorry if this sounds aggressive and bitter, and in a lot of ways it is. I'm sorry.
My personal circumstances are such that owning a home isn't a reality and when news reports reflect this reality, I typically pay attention and give comment.
I would love to own, build equity and security, etc., but it's not on the cards. That's it.
THanks Franzy! :)
ReplyDeleteI read that same Age article this morning and was equally amused by the statement that such rich bastards tend to sell off their hobby farms on the Mornington Peninsula or beach houses at Portsea before needing to get rid of their 5 br in Kew. Poor dears.
I'm Gen X and had the loathsome job of being a graduate trainee at ANZ bank providing housing loans to poor bastards like Ashleigh when the rate was 17.5%. It scared me enough to put me off buying my own place for another ten years.
Unlike Shippy, I only did it with two incomes (LCs and mine) and we bought a crumbling old house in a crumblier suburb in Melbourne. Paid off as much as we could, renovated it ourselves and sold it 6 years later to move back home to SA. Again bought a crumbling wreck in a slightly less crumbly suburb and were lucky enough to see house prices go absolutely nuts about six months later. Eight years on and lots of renos later we're trying to sell. At a price that yes seems like a lot, but will essentially only allow us to buy the equivalent house NOT all done up in a slightly crumblier suburb in Melbourne.
I'm with Shippy, Franzy. You're a lot richer than you think mate and somehow you and Mele will own your own bricks-and-mortar some day. However we look at it and from whatever generational vantage point, it seems fucking frightening and the first time you get a mortgage, it truly is. However it gets less scary the second, third and - hopefully soon for us - the fourth time.
Oh and I wrote this whilst eating home brand saladas, vegemite and no-name cheese, wearing KMart clothes and sipping a glass of FUIC Feel Good iced coffee from the 2 litre container to save money. Yep, I 'own' (mostly) a 3bedroom one bathroom, but still have a 13 year old car and am typing this on a 12 year old PC while my 5 yo laptop is at the fixer uppers. :)
ReplyDeleteFIve bedrooms and three bathrooms - who'd want to furnish and clean up all that?
Thanks? What for? Does this mean we have a deal? Shall I drop off some of my sparkling character at K-Gardens and start moving in my stuff?
ReplyDeleteI wish I had bank job ...
No Franzy, you don't ever wish you had a bank job. In fact, I'm trotting off to blog about it right now.....
ReplyDeleteSquib - Papa?
ReplyDeleteHuh?
ReplyDeleteSurely your grammatical justifications could only arise from having tea with our family for a few decades ...
Ashleigh, fully furnished? I don't know anyone at all who'd want to move into a fully furnished house. Where would be the fun of finding places to put your own furniture, rearranging time and again until it felt right? Buying one or two new pieces to "finish" the look?
ReplyDeleteUnless by fully furnished you mean with dishwasher and airconditioning? Foxtel cable and internet phone lines?
Thank you shippy.
Man did that sentence confuse me in September - the first three times I read it.
ReplyDeleteBut I believe I got it by the fourth. Although, I had to show it to a few people and they came up with different meanings.
River - Yeah, I'm not sure what the appeal of a fully-furnished place would be. Furniture is the only thing I own!
ReplyDeleteShippy - And did those people you showed it to look at you funny and tell you to get back to work?
And now I have - http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2008/11/no-franzy-noooooo-one-of-my-favourite.html
ReplyDeleteHmm. Caused a bit of a stir. Oops.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, the caps bit (you know, looking through a tunnel, etc) was a reference to the header photo which I thought fitted the message, or at least my interpretation of it.
And nextly, I completely agree. I've no time at all for some poor-little-rich-kid who wants to have a bawl into their wheeties about the value of their mansion dropping. Whoopy-doo.
However, this has been going on for some time. Remember Auction Squad on TV. "Ohh lets tart the old dear up and you should get...oh... 750K". I cringed so much at the greed and crazy expectations that I couldn't watch it any more.
So, I know where you are coming from, and think the system stinks. Didn't mean to get you offside and all that.
Oh, and fully furnished....
You surely know the types who move into their new McMansion which has to be decked out with wall-to-wall carpet, and every room full of Harvey Normans finest. No sheets on the windows, or aunty Melva's hand-me-down couch with a crappy 20 year old 3rd hand TV in the corner. That's what I mean by fully furnished.
15 years of easy money have raised expectations, from the Toorak Toffs to the Northern Bogans.
There's not so many now with their feet on the ground. You and me count cos we can see the silliness around us.
Is that a good enuf backpedal? :)
Sure. Have a cheezel.
ReplyDeleteActually though: I'm writing a book about them at the moment, but I DON'T know any of the easy-money types buying McMansions without working for them. I read about them. I write about them. But knowing anyone so obsessed with property that they don't bother with social inclusion?
Never met one.
You?