Sydney property market is cray cray (Part I): Old people

I’m not sure if this is a bad thing, but every time I see a couple in say their 60s, casually walking around their inner city neighbourhood, who then stop to check out a real estate sign, I feel compelled to wind down my window and say “Oi you over there! Yeah you! You Australian-dream-stealing, dickheads, back away from the sign and leave some property for the rest of us!”. Yep I know, it’s weird…how I’m able to pick that someone is in their 60s in Woollahra, given it has the highest ratio of cosmetic surgeons per sqm is beyond me…I guess you could just say that I have a gift.

Now it’s not like I’m in the market for property…[yep if you’ll recall, buying property counts as eating into my ‘Freedom money’ stash, and as a result I’d rather be forced to substitute sauteed Kale for pasta in my diet than actually save to purchase a house…actually that’s a lie. Ok if in the off chance that I am one day forced into this terrible terrible position of choosing between Kale-pasta or buy a house, my actual answer will be to travel the seas to Italy, to the famous town, Pizzapasta, and seek guidance from my mentor, The Great Don Fettucini Linguiniparmesan, maker of the Great pasta…it is here that the Don will tell me what I should do…buy a house…of pasta. “HURRAH” the towns people will cry, because the Don has once again solved life’s biggest dilemma (the first big life dilemma the Don solved was how to make just one food group so so delicious). I will then leave Pizzapasta and embark on a 10 year project to build my Pasta House…it will have walls of Papardelle, Tomato Sauce flooring and even a chair made of ham bits. Even Kevin McCleod from Grand Designs will be forced to only say positive things as opposed to thinly veiled, backhanded compliments. Best of all, I will then spend every other year “renovating” by eating all the pasta…BEST HOUSE EVER!]

Anyway I’m not really sure why I get so worked up, especially given I recently got “Renter 4 Lyf” tattooed across my shoulders to make rental applications easier [FYI it does NOT make it easier]. But the thing that gets to me in this whole property debate is the fact that a lot of my friends and other young people who work hard and actually want this, are getting pushed further and further out of the market, when all they want to do is live in a happenin’ suburb and actually own the place that they live in…and OH MY GOD maybe even be able to afford a place with grass [whaaaat? I hear you say. Yes I hear such places exist!]. Now I know it’s not just the ‘oldies’ that are doing this, there are other factors too, but I can’t help but think that some of this generation, who are purchasing their 3^rd and 4^th investment properties, and let’s be honest may or may not be collecting their un-means-tested-pension, have already realised the “Australian dream”…many times over…

So whilst I may have no interest in the property market, and may also have an ill-advised tattoo which somewhat contradicts my stance with respect to property, you can count on me to be the weirdo yelling at all the 60-year-old couples who probably deserve better but I’m just making a mass generalisation about them. Think of me as some sort of Property Robin Hood, yelling obscenities at random rich-looking people and distracting them from their auction game plan, in the hope that some young person might win their auction.

Anyway this just got a bit heavy so I’ll leave you with a blue print for My Dream House: