A worried father has revealed his son sees no future anywhere in Australia amid the country’s housing crisis.
The Brisbane father explained the dire situation facing his son in a post shared on a Facebook group dedicated to helping young Australians understand their finances.
She said her son, who is over 21 and works full-time as a second-year apprentice, wants to move out of the house.
However, weekly rents in the area account for almost 90 percent of her son’s salary.
“I am sincerely concerned about the future of this country,” the father wrote.
‘The most basic rent for a three-bedroom home anywhere nearby costs more than 90 percent of your salary. Terraced houses are no better.
‘If I hadn’t gotten a mortgage over 20 years ago, I would never have been able to live in the house I grew up in.
‘I have never in my life earned enough to qualify for the loan needed to buy my own home at today’s prices, even if I were given the entire original purchase price as the necessary deposit.’
The concerned father explained that his son cannot afford to move out of the house because the weekly rent accounts for almost 90 per cent of his salary (file image of a home in Milton, an inner suburb of Brisbane)
He added that his son deposits money into his savings every week and has also invested in stocks.
Despite his savings, the father said “housing is simply unaffordable” for his son, even in Brisbane’s outer suburbs.
Due to the rising cost of living and the country’s worsening housing crisis, the father said his son plans to move abroad the moment he finishes his apprenticeship.
“He sees no future anywhere in Australia,” the father wrote.
“Other than waiting for her grandparents to die (probably in another 20 years), I don’t think she has any other option but to move out of her parents’ house.”
Many agreed with the father’s sentiment, saying that Australia’s housing market is no longer viable for young Australians.
“Thirty years ago it was not uncommon for the parents of your schoolmates to have holiday homes and the mother not even to work,” one person wrote.
“It’s pretty sad, isn’t it? Ten years ago, $100,000 a year was a pretty decent amount. Now, $200,000 a year is barely a decent amount,” another person added.
“It is what it is. We have to adapt and overcome the situation. A new wave of life is coming to Australia,” commented a third.
Another person said Australia was once the land of “fair trajectories” but now young Australians need to rely on intergenerational wealth to get by.
“He will receive a house when you die or you will buy it for him,” they wrote.
“Intergenerational wealth is the key in Australia, sadly. The land of “equal opportunity” disappeared many years ago and all the life left in it disappeared during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The father said he was “really worried about the future of the country” as the housing market is pricing young Australians out of the country, forcing some, including his son, to consider moving overseas. Pictured: File image of young Australians at a music festival
Economist Leith van Onselen said politicians are afraid to introduce any measures that might reduce prices for fear of losing votes. Pictured: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
Australian house prices rose during the pandemic in 2021 after the Reserve Bank cut interest rates to a record low of 0.1 percent.
Meanwhile, prices have soared by double digits over the past year in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth despite the Reserve Bank raising interest rates 13 times in 2022 and 2023 to a 12-year high of 4.35 per cent.
This was due to increasing demand caused by record levels of immigration.
Last year, net outbound migration hit record levels, approaching 550,000, mostly to Sydney and Melbourne, which in turn pushed would-be buyers towards more affordable cities.
A person with an average income of $100,017 buying a typical Australian home would not be able to afford a home with a median price of $802,357.
This is because this individual buyer would have a debt-to-income ratio of 8, which is beyond the current bank lending threshold of 5.2 based on the RBA’s current cash rate.
The situation is even more serious in capital cities, where the average house price is now $997,352.
Earlier this week, economist Leith van Onselen warned that government incentives aimed at making housing more affordable for first-time buyers, such as grants and stamp duty concessions, are actually having the opposite effect, only attracting more buyers to the market and pushing prices ever higher.
Most MPs are property owners and personally benefit from rising prices, and Mr van Onselen said even those not motivated by personal gain are afraid to introduce any measures that might reduce prices for fear of losing votes.
“Too many politicians have their noses in the trough and know that falling house prices are electoral poison,” he said.
