Yesterday the ABC published a piece looking at the various impediments to home ownership faced by different generations. It features (among many other voices) Kerrie Boylett, 68, who recounts the struggle and sacrifice she faced buying a home in 1995.
“It was really hard, really hard — I mean, I remember once I had the electricity cut off for three days,” she recalls.
There were no holidays until my daughter was 13. I would have dinner parties at my place for friends, instead of going out, by buying two kilos of meat and making a salad and spaghetti bolognese and a cake. And that’s how I had friends and entertainment — at home.
They [millennials] want, you know, the latest mobile phone, the latest iPad, they want a nice car, they want to go on holidays, they still want to go out to restaurants. They pay $20 or $30 for a drink if they go out, have a nice time …
You can fill the script from there. Any piece featuring a boomer who has some strong views on why young people can’t afford a house (and suggests it’s a bit their own fault) might as well have been cooked up in a lab to get the angriest reactions from Twitter and elsewhere.
Some readers pointed out that the median house price when Boylett bought was about 6.7 times higher than the median single income, but in 2022 it was a whopping 16.5 times more. Others focused on the eye-watering increase in average house prices to well over a million dollars, even for a unit, in Coogee where she bought her first home for just $150,000.
The ABC piece also features voices from a new millennial homeowner and a host of experts, and concludes that it is indeed harder than it’s ever been to buy a house.
But of all the people to represent the boomer contingent — we’re not saying they shouldn’t be asked, before you accuse us of a hate crime, Jane Caro, and indeed, older women are hit as hard by the housing crisis as anyone — Boylett is, shall we say, a colourful option.
Yes, this is not the first time she has made the news.
She was — after her struggles in the mid-1990s — the general manager for John Hemmes’ hospitality behemoth Merivale for more than a decade before his death in 2015. The “trusted lieutenant” inherited $2 million from Hemmes’ fortune. Merivale is facing a long-running class action lawsuit on behalf of workers alleging more than $100 million in wage theft.
There is a certain level of smugness from some folk who have struggled and made it, and a contempt for those who have struggled equally and failed. And I guess the extra two million from Hemmes brings with it that extra layer of smugness and contempt that insulates against fact, sympathy and any ability to see what is actually happening with the housing and accommodation crisis.
As a baby boomer, I’d like to disassociate myself from this patronising and objectionable person.
I am a Baby Boomer and I am fed up with my contemporaries having a go at younger people. Note that our generation benefitted from a better award and industrial system unlike the casualised workforce today and did not face a rorted home buying market biased to landlord investors, some of whom may be the same people offering criticism.
I could hardly believe this article when I read it. It sounded like something more suited to A Current Affair. Maybe it was written by someone on work experience and snuck by a much too busy editor?
Current Affair? – more like Newscorpse
“Making the news”?
… Meanwhile across a parallel universe, in Crikey – after last week railing about the as yet unaccounted, unatoned complicity of the “friendly media” in their role, of doing the Coalition government’s PR bidding, against the “leftist media” during the Robodebt propaganda war – there’s a piece by Dennis Atkins (national political editor of Rupert’s Brisbane Curry or Maul; from Howard’s government up to and including Morrison’s – ’til July 2019. ‘Editing’ content of that particular concern in that paper, during that particularly articulated politically complicit period – still not apologised for) sermonising on “integrity, accountability and transparency”?
Again, if those elements of the media refuse to bring themselves to observe the standards of integrity, responsibility, transparency and accountability it likes to hold others : what right does it have to hold those others to standards they (the media) can’t/won’t abide?
Can’t help but agree.
FIRE sector PR or agitprop, keeping property in the news and people talking about it for reinforcement, but allowing the above median age & high/full equity home ownership voter to pat themselves on the back (collective narcissism*) while looking down upon millennials; we’re just about to enter the start of the ‘baby boomer bomb’ die off which may see the market floor or real values fall over a generation.
*’Collective narcissism is characterized by the members of a group holding an inflated view of their ingroup which requires constant external validation. Collective narcissism can be exhibited by an individual on behalf of any social group or by a group as a whole.’ Wiki
I’m on the tail end of Baby Boomer Generation, approaching 60 . My husband and I bought our first home in 1994 after the scary high interest rates of the 80s but our interest rate was still around the 5% mark, maybe a little less. I asked at the time what our payments would be if interest rates got to 10% and we would have managed. This woman CHOSE to take a loan at 19% because nobody else would lend her the money.
We had 2 kids already and another arrived in ’97. Now, my spouse has a well paying job. Our first house (2bedroom, closed in verandah & 2-way bathroom) was in a country town and cost $84,500. Six years later we refinanced and started renovations (and got caught in the GST introduction). We paid it off in 18 years. When we sold our house 23 years later, it sold for $350,000 and that paid for our current home in another town (excluding legals.) Less land, more bedrooms plus ensuite. The thought of moving to the city and having to take out another mortgage just has no attraction for us.
The biggest thing is, both my oldest 2 sons are in uncertain work. The oldest (35yo) is rarely out of work but he’s had businesses close without telling employees and it’s his work ethic that’s got him his next job, but he can’t afford to rent on his own so he boards with a married couple with kids. He is unlikely to have a home of his own.
My middle son (30) is renting with his girlfriend. His gf works remotely, he works in horticulture which of course depends on the weather. They’ve made a decision not to try buying a house at all.
My youngest (26) has a disability and has only been living independently for the last 4 months in a private rental. While the bathroom is somewhat suitable, the landlords won’t allow any other adjustments to the unit (built in 70s). He is paying towards the top of his budget. If his rent increases more than $10 a week at end of lease or his condition deteriorates further than it is, he will be forced to return back home. He needs more stable, suitable housing but we live in a country town. All his support services are here so suitable social/public housing is near impossible to access, especially for someone who may require a wheelchair in the future.
I really feel the the young people trying to buy a house these days.
I really feel *for* the young people.
There’s a reason I hate typing on my phone-.-
I just hate the lack of an edit button here.
And with this cosmetic change today, we’ve lost the ability to upvote or downvote comments below the show more comments button. Good one
Thanks for your reply Kimmo, I thought it was me when I couldn’t upvote/downvote.