Is the Great Australian Dream Still Alive ?

In my latest blog I ask the question about attitudes to owning your own home for people starting out and do we as a society have a different want and need than in the past to having a nice house to live in ?

From affordability to practicality reasons i'm interested to know people's opinion on this matter.
 
Yes. I met an Indian man who came to Melbourne 4 years ago- he did not speak a word of English. 4 years later, he is doing very well income-wise so I always keep him in mind when things get tough at work.
 
i think australia attitude towards wanting to live in their own place and putting privacy above anything else is what's driving up the market as well. Had we all more open about living with other people (family or friends) and have a property shared by 2-3 families then we will see big correction in the housing prices
 
People do things for lots of reasons. Owning a home is no different. If people could get very long leases, I doubt as many people would be concerned about buying a home.

I bought a home when I was 26, because I figured that having a place to live was important, and by getting started paying it off early I would be finished paying it off early, and could thus enjoy life more when I no longer had the expense.

Owning a home these days is still a dream for many. The problem is that many people don't have the discipline or financial nouse to do what is required.
 
In my latest blog I ask the question about attitudes to owning your own home for people starting out and do we as a society have a different want and need than in the past to having a nice house to live in ?

From affordability to practicality reasons i'm interested to know people's opinion on this matter.

The great Australian dream is just that - a dream.
 
On the contrary, Deltaberry, the Great Australian Dream is very achievable and nearly 70% of the population live in their own home

At no time was buying property 'easy'. My parents bought a property in Melbourne in 1948 for 1,400 pounds. This was their third house, and they would have had a good deposit. My parents were both working at the time - very unusual for those days - and they would have been earning about 5 pounds a week between them. My Mother's income would not have been taken into account for the loan

In the street where I grew up, there were 5 houses rented, the rest were owner occupied. This figure would be about the same today.

digs, in my opinion people's needs and wants as an overall expression of the population do not change much over time. There will always be people who do not choose to buy at any given time - statistics tell us that households which rent are about 30% of all tenancies, but I would venture to say that most people will occupy their own home at one time in their life. I have rented, bought, sold, built, renovated, upgraded etc etc and doubt that I am in any way unusual to most people in that I have lived in a variety of properties over the years and have been both a tenant and an owner occupier. I have also been a landlord and probably about half of my tenants have moved on primarily because they have bought their own property - interestingly, quite a few times tenants have made offers to buy my property as this would save them from having to move!

Rough figures show that 30% of properties in Australia are fully owned, 30% (including Public Housing) are rented and the remainder are owner occupied with a mortgage. All properties are owned by somebody but the figures relate only to the status of occupancy.

These figures of occupancy vary from suburb to suburb but are generally reliable across Australia as witnessed by the various Census over the years.

What also does not change much are those good folk who cry doom and gloom and that the young / the old / the low income earner / the circus trapeze artists will never be able to afford to buy their own home.

My three children all bought property on or before the age of 18 from putting groceries into bags at BiLo after school and on weekends. At time of writing, none of them live in the first property they each bought - but someone does and both landlord and tenants are happy.

If you think you can, if you think you can't, you're right.

If you don't want to own property, then even if you won Tattslotto you wouldn't buy a house and if you won a BoysTown house in a raffle you would sell it as soon as possible. Not everybody wants the same things in life but the people who want to own their own home will find a way to achieve this and the people who don't want to own their own home will have no incentive to do something which does not appeal to them.


Cheers
Kristine
 
The Dream May Change but it isnt Dead

The Dream may change with each changing era, but there is always a dream of some sorts. There will always be those who will take whatever steps are necessary to achieve their dream, there will always be those who dont know why they are getting out of bed each day, and there will be others somewhere in between.

What is "right" for one person will not be for someone else. We all make our own roads in life. I loved watching Paper Giants on TV last weekend, it showed how far we have come since the days when girls like me were groomed to be baby-makers. We forget how a few decades ago the world was 100% different from what it is today. No doubt it will be different again in the not so distant future.

I certainly dont see any harm in buying some attractive townhouses in walking distance to a capital city train station ;)
 
Try write that in the Daily Telegraph forum and see what response you get...

Which would prove devo's point.

DB, may I gracefully propose that the public forums on the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun (Melb's equivalent) are not a solid reference point for educating oneself about the real plight of their economic circumstances. Just a good reference point to see people's abusive, misspelt posts and the placement of their misplaced frustration
 
Last time I checked the great australian dream was to own *one* house with room in the backyard for a hills hoist (ok, maybe one of those little fold up ones these days) not ten of them in 3-5 years ...
 
In my latest blog I ask the question about attitudes to owning your own home for people starting out and do we as a society have a different want and need than in the past to having a nice house to live in ?

From affordability to practicality reasons i'm interested to know people's opinion on this matter.

Many of our ancestors were married with kids and buying a home by aged 20. For most, the home was small, and the furniture was borrowed or second hand. There was either no car or one car. Yes, many women were housewives and didn't work.

My observation is that younger people seem to be less in a hurry to buy than we (50 year olds) or our parents or their parents were.

This may be linked to such things as the later age of people getting married and having kids? I was one of those people - married at 30 and first child at 40, but I bought my first PPoR at 25, so I don't really know...

On this forum there also seems to be a lot of younger ones who whinge about how unaffordable housing is, but I don't think this is necessarily the view of all younguns, as only a handful would ever bother coming on here, or even know about it.

So, I reckon this site is for the enlightened minority (talking about the younger generation) I suspect, and naturally by virtue of that they are looking at housing with an investor's mindset as well as with their heart.

I think most of the whinging comes from what their expectations are for a first home - the expectations are much higher than what my parents and grandparents' were, and previous generations didn't look at housing with their calculator in their hand to establish the value of a house in terms of "times income".

They (the older generations) simply saw it, liked it and bought it if they could afford it.
 
and if you won a BoysTown house in a raffle you would sell it as soon as possible.

Cheers
Kristine

Do the prizes on that bloody raffle actually exist?

I've never ever heard of anyone winning a prize on those Boystown raffles.

I thought it was just a scam like the Nigerian Bank/Deceased Estate emails.

Still waiting for my cheque too. They aren't responding to my emails anymore either. :eek:
 
Which would prove devo's point.

DB, may I gracefully propose that the public forums on the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun (Melb's equivalent) are not a solid reference point for educating oneself about the real plight of their economic circumstances. Just a good reference point to see people's abusive, misspelt posts and the placement of their misplaced frustration

No it's just a gauge of 90% of newspaper readers - then again you'd imagine SS opinion would be much more representative of the true financial position of the average Australian
 
No it's just a gauge of 90% of newspaper readers - then again you'd imagine SS opinion would be much more representative of the true financial position of the average Australian

No it's not. It's the opinion of people who post in newspaper comments sections. You can't possible read the garbage that is posted on those sites and think it's representative of the 'average Australians' views.

If you're right, God help us all.
 
Originally Posted by Kristine..

and if you won a BoysTown house in a raffle you would sell it as soon as possible.

Cheers
Kristine

I definitely would. I want to choose where I live and I would never let one out. That must be why I never buy tickets. :D
 
Yet the vast, vast majority of the population don't do it ... can't be *that* easy ...

It isn't *that* easy. If it was everyone would do it.

And statistically no more than 3% could POSSIBLY own 10 properties if 70% are owner occupied. The fact that the seminars tell you it is easy causes hundreds of thousands to start down the road, limiting the number with 10 properties even further. Truth is the market is grossly overbought. At least with shares you can buy worldwide. That market still gets hot at times and it is the "market watcher" in me ringing the alarm bells in both property and shares.

I like to think that I'm keeping my powder dry, or living to fight another day. I'm not a coward as Rockstar is implying.
 
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