By LUCY ORMONDE
$80K.
That’s how much my parents paid when they bought their first three-bedroom weatherboard ‘wonderland’ in the suburbs of Melbourne.
It was the early eighties. They were in their mid twenties. And they’d worked hard for a few years to save $20K for the deposit. The remaining $60K they borrowed from the bank.
The house wasn’t much. But it was in the suburb next to the one they’d grown up in. And, well, it was a start.
I’m not sure about my parents, but at that time the average income was a little over $20K a year. So I can only imagine that the prospect of entering into a $60K debt was a daunting one. But the thing is – I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as daunting as the $500K+ mortgages my friends are signing up for thirty years later.
$500K? That’s a lot more than the average 20-something earns in three years and it’s at the conservative end of some of the loans they’re signing up for.
It’s scary, isn’t it? The amount of money young people are paying for houses they realistically can’t afford. Personally, I’m terrified. I want a home. I know I’m at the age where I think I should be thinking about buying, but the truth is that I can’t imagine ever being able to confidently make those kind of bottom line repayments – and have any money left over for the rest of life.