This Millionaire Thinks Smashed Avo And The Kardashians Are Why You Can’t Afford A House
"When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocados for $19 and four coffees at $4 each."
Bloody millennials! Always with the Kendall Jenners and the Waleed Alys and the wanting to own their own homes. Honestly, do they ever stop moaning? Gen Y, more like Gen Whine, am I right, folks?
Never mind that the average house price in capital cities shot up 13 per cent in the past 12 months while wages only went up by 2 per cent, or that the latest Demographia international housing affordability survey described every single major housing market in the country as “severely unaffordable”. What these video game-smoking, weed-sipping, smashed latte on toast-eating bludgers need is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, stop complaining, and get to work.
But don’t take my word for it. Just ask Melbourne real estate mogul and bona fide young person [citation needed] Tim Gurner. The 35-year-old – who is reportedly worth close to half a billion dollars and dresses like an extra from that boring Wall Street sequel starring Shia LaBeouf – spoke to 60 Minutes for a piece on housing affordability. And boy did he have choice words for his fellow youths.
“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocados for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” Gurner told Nine Network’s finance editor Ross Greenwood. “The expectations of younger people are very, very high. They want to eat out every day, they want to travel to Europe every year.”
The other problem with kids these days? Too much damn reality TV!
“This generation is watching the Kardashians and thinking that’s normal,” says Gurner. “[They think] owning a Bentley is normal, owning a BMW is normal.”
And sure, that comment may sound fucking ridiculous, but keep in mind Gurner is very, very rich, and as 60 Minutes tells us, he started with nothing. Well, nothing except the $34,000 he was given by his grandfather when he was 19 and had just graduated from a prestigious private school. Gurner used the money to buy his first property, a gym.
I mean, of course it was a gym. The guy obviously lifts.
Point is, if young people would just stop whingeing and stuffing their gobs with avocado, they too could could be property giants! “You might have to buy an investment property first,” concedes Gurner. “You might have to share with mum and dad, you might have to buy with a friend. But you’ve got to get your foot in the door.”
I can't afford smashed avocado because I've bought too many houses.
— Kirsty Webeck (@KirstyWebeck) May 15, 2017
Let’s just ignore the fact that weekend penalty rates are being slashed, and that the government has launched a fresh fiscal assault on uni students, and that the latest federal budget does basically nothing to address the main causes of the housing affordability crisis. You’ve got to get your foot in the [gym] door.
Look, I’m not saying Gurner didn’t work hard to get to where he is today. But the reality is, not everyone has family who are in the position to help them out with a deposit. In an exchange that didn’t make it into the final broadcast but was shared on the 60 Minutes Facebook page, Gurner told Greenwood he thought there should be “some sort of government incentive to encourage parents to be able to pass down money earlier.”
Yeah, because making it easier for people to inherit wealth is exactly what we need to level the economic playing field.
Incidentally, in a recent interview with the Australian Financial Review, Gurner said that his biggest fault was that he is “definitely a perfectionist.”
Guess again, mate. Guess again.
You can watch the entire 60 Minutes segment on housing affordability here.