By Elizabeth Davies
The latest stats are tough to argue with. Since the Reserve Bank’s lending limits came in the number of first home buyers has dropped in 90 Auckland suburbs. The opportunity to own one’s own home is slipping further and further out of my generation’s grasp.
We’re often criticised for wanting to ‘take up where our parents left off’. The desire to have what our parents were lucky enough to have leads to members of the older generation accusing us of being selfish or bratty, and we are shamed for our supposed sense of ‘entitlement’. I won’t pretend I don’t feel the sting of such remarks.
The latest news predicts interest rates could peak at a level where a family’s mortgage is accounting for two thirds of their household income. It’s no longer a matter of working hard or being smart with your money, though of course these are both now more important than ever. It’s now a matter of making big sacrifices or accepting the seeming impossibility of it all.
People are being forced to choose between their job in the city or their house in wherever they can afford. They are being asked to choose if they want to buy a house now or have kids. It’s no surprise that women are choosing to have their first child later and later as families desperately scramble to achieve that elusive state of ‘financial security’.
The possibility of never being able to afford to buy my own home is an incredibly bitter pill to swallow. Made even harder by the fact that I was, like many people my age, brought up thinking differently.
Every parent wants the best for their child. We are raised with the mantra that we can ‘do anything we put our minds to’ and ‘be anything we want to be’. The fantasy of owning one’s own home hasn’t changed from our great grandparents to our grandparents, to Mum and Dad, to you. The reality however is barely recognisable.
As children we were sold the Kiwi dream, and now, twenty five or thirty years later, we are opening our eyes and we’re not loving what we see. Frankly, we are pissed off. We are told point blank to forget about living in Auckland, near our families, our careers and the place we consider home. We’re told to scale back our hopes, and be thankful if we can afford a unit let alone a free standing house.
Worst of all we are told that if we want better we should leave New Zealand. More often than not we are told to ‘get over it’. As the very frameworks of our domestic future are burned to the ground we are sneered at.
I know not everyone is so critical of my generation and many people I know are only able to consider buying a house because their parents are generous enough to help them financially. It would seem parents have a couple of options, swap out the bed time stories of white picket fences and big back yards to dodgy landlords, unpredictable rent and rural living or if you are able, give your kids a leg up.
If you must promise us the moon, the least you can do is not laugh as we jump to reach it.
As interest rates, housing price averages and stress levels rise, there is only one thing going down – our expectations.
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Elizabeth Davies is a 24 year-old graduate of the Auckland University of Technology post graduate journalism course. She lives with her partner in Epsom and spends her free time refurbishing vintage furniture and attempting to bake while fighting a daily battle against her bank balance. She writes a weekly article for interest.co.nz on money matters and financial struggles from a young person's perspective.
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