A mayor from Melbourne’s Outer-East has accused aspiring home buyers locked out of the market of not being willing to sacrifice:
YOUNG people struggling to buy their first home are “not willing to sacrifice enough” to break into the property market, an eastern suburbs mayor has said.
Knox mayor John Mortimore spoke out after a council report confirmed what most had already suspected — that the outer eastern municipality has joined much of Melbourne as an increasingly unaffordable place to live.
The report said Knox’s property prices were rising at one of the fastest rates in Melbourne…
Cr Mortimore, 72, said people looking to buy their first home in Knox needed to make sacrifices.
“The whole thing about sacrificing seems to have taken a bit of a back seat,” he said.
“It’s always been a case that to get a house you had to sacrifice certain things, you couldn’t keep up the same lifestyle, you couldn’t each have your own car.
“Certainly during my time if you wanted a house you had a family car. If you needed other ways of getting around you used public transport or found some other way. Now everybody’s got to have a car, late model. The expectations are too high.
“People expect too much or are not willing to sacrifice enough.”
It’s always sickening when a landed baby boomer, who had the opportunity to purchase a decent family-sized home on one income only to watch it soar in value, accuses young people of being lazy, having too high expectations, or not willing to sacrifice.
Of course, if Cr Mortimore had actually bothered to read the council’s report, he would have discovered that Knox rental affordability has collapsed:
“A typical home-buying household in Knox needed 8.8 times its annual income to purchase a median price home in 2016” and “10.6 % of mortgaged households in Knox (2,400) were experiencing ‘mortgage stress’ in 2016“:
Whereas Melbourne’s broader median dwelling price-to-income ratio has soared from 5.2 times in 2002 to 7.5 times as at 2017:
No, let’s ignore these facts and blame the victim instead.
