“There is a big seduction that’s very powerful in this country of having your own home.”
Australians are spending an ever-increasing amount on homes, seduced, to borrow psychologist Elisabeth Wilson-Evered’s term, by the dream of ownership.
Indeed, there is sometimes a “sense of failure” if a couple is still renting when they marry or have children, said Professor Wilson-Evered, director of research at Relationship Australia Queensland. The home represents security and comes to embody a family’s very identity, even achievement.
Ironically, Australians are engaging in increasingly risky behaviour to gain that security as they face the uncertainty that comes from a combination of the global economic crisis, labour market reforms and a widening gap between rich and poor.
“Many Australians will do almost anything to purchase a home,” said Sydney University anthropologist Stephen Juan. “They will often take out loans far beyond their ability to repay them.”
Regardless of their – or the world’s – financial position, Australians “reason that they might as well ‘go for it’ now because it may be their only chance,” Dr Juan said. “Or if another chance comes along tomorrow it will not be as good as today’s.”
That notion is borne out in official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that show the average loan size for first-home buyers was $285,000 in January. That is more than a third higher than it was five years ago. But over the same timeframe, full-time weekly earnings rose only 21 per cent to $1226, according to ABS figures.