First-home buyers are finding ways to get a foot on Auckland's property ladder. Photo / Getty Images
First-home buyers are finding ways to get a foot on Auckland's property ladder. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion
COMMENT:
A report out this week has shown there's been a dramatic reversal in housing affordability in the Auckland market but, along with the good news, came some bad.
Despite the fact housing affordability has improved 26 per cent since the giddy, overheated heights of 2015, Auckland isstill considered one of the least affordable housing markets in the developed world.
The city's median house price of $850,000 is 8.3 times the median household income. Which means despite the foreign buyer ban, greater housing density - meaning more houses on the market - lending restrictions, low interest rates and a strong economy delivering higher wages, the report's author says a family earning the median wage cannot afford to buy a median-priced house.
So does that mean young people are doomed to rent for the rest of their lives? Not according to my listeners. When I asked them if they were reconciled to be renters, hard-working young people came out in their droves to tell us how they'd bought their first homes.
Young home buyers realise they have to compromise to realise their dream of home ownership in Auckland's heated property market. Photo / File
And guess what? They weren't trust fund babies, or young people looking for the Bank of Mum and Dad to bankroll them. It was exactly the same way we all did it. They set goals. They saved. They did without. They prioritised their spending. And after a couple of years of graft, they were turning the key of the door of their first home.
Turns out there's not much difference between Boomers and Millennials after all. And most of our young home buyers realised pretty early on that they would have to compromise before they could realise their dream.
One young woman said she told her husband right from the start that she wanted three bedrooms and two bathrooms. That was her bottom line. After just a few weeks of open homes, she realised that on their budget, they couldn't afford the two bathrooms. So she reset her bottom line and six months later, she and her husband owned their own home.
Philip and his brother wanted to buy an apartment in Auckland city but although they had saved enough for a deposit, it wasn't enough to buy the apartment they wanted. Also, Philip's brother lived overseas and the banks didn't like that. So, after crunching numbers, Philip worked out they could get a mortgage on 10 per cent if they built from new - and they could afford to pay the mortgage if they built it out of the main centre. Now, Philip and his brother are the proud owners of a new rental in Hamilton.
Despite the fact housing affordability has improved 26 per cent since 2015, Auckland is still considered one of the least affordable housing markets in the developed world. Photo / File
Another young man in his early 20s, with a partner and a young child, wanted a three-bedroom house of their own in Wellington with a big backyard for the baby. They ended up miles away from the suburb of their choice and settled on a house in Wainuiomata - not their forever home, not where they thought they'd buy - but as he said, they're on the first rung of the housing ladder and they're still relatively young.
Story after story came through from young property owners and the proud parents of young property owners - men and women who weren't looking for a handout, who weren't looking to blame previous generations for the high cost of housing. They were sensible, practical young people who cut their coat to suit their cloth, who lowered their expectations when reality set in, who were willing to forego travel and to move back in their parents to save what they needed to achieve their home ownership dream.
They were paying back the mortgage faster than they needed to and some of the young couples, two who rang me who were in their early 30s, were mortgage free - in one case, because they took in a flatmate. They would have preferred to have lived on their own, but not as much as they wanted to get rid of their mortgage.
It was a morning of inspirational stories and the Boomers enjoyed hearing of the younger generation's achievements.
The quiet Kiwis who are getting on and succeeding, who are ignoring negative headlines, and taking their futures into their own hands rather than relying on other people to make their futures for them, are alive and well and thriving. It was wonderful to have an opportunity to celebrate them.
