It’s time to rethink the Australian Dream
Is Australia’s obsession with home ownership stuck in the past?
On a recent episode of The Smart Property Investment Show, Investor Partner Group CEO Moxin Reza revealed that owning property may belong to another era.
“In the economies that I come from backing into Pakistan or India or countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, or even the UK to some extent, this dream of owning a property for yourself is not a reality anymore,” said Reza.
Widening price disparity and impossible mortgage affordability mean that in Reza’s eyes, the dream of home ownership will soon “be no more”.
Instead, he envisions a world where Australians will either “rent forever, or you would keep scaling up your property portfolio” and create “the baton for generational wealth” for future family members.
As in other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Reza believes that home ownership in Australia “is becoming so far-fetched that you can’t be a first-time buyer anymore”.
Smart Property Investment’s Phil Tarrant noted that this view is a tough pill for many Australians to swallow.
“A lot of Australia, in general, has quite a difficult relationship with the idea that the way it has been up to the point where we are today, to where and how it’s going to be into the future, are probably going to be two very different things,” Tarrant said.
As Australia begins to follow in the footsteps of other international precedents, Tarrant warned that “Australians need to have a bit of a mindset shift” and realise that the growth of the Australian economy means that owning a home is “not going to be available to everyone”.
For those who “would be outraged with that statement”, Tarrant and Reza suggest that buying property to invest, rather than to live in, will be the way of the future.
“At some point in time, families need to start investing in property,” Reza said, noting a rise of first-generation investors in recent years.
“Will there be the carriage of wealth to other generations moving forward?” the CEO asked.
“You’re always going to have property investment available to all Australians,” he said. “The way in which they become a property investor means that more might inherit it rather than start it, but there’s always going to be the ability for people to start investing in property.”
Listen to the full conversation between Tarrant and Reza here.