Can’t Afford Your First Home? Try this Strategy!

The headline caught my eye:

“Built for Two - from first-home buyers to empty-nesters, our small lot special has options for everyone.

This from the local paper’s weekly New Homes guide which tends to focus on the 4 bedroom, 2-bathroom plus pool MacMansion segment of the market.

Interesting I thought: maybe they have figured out that not everyone needs 4-bedrooms.  Well no. not really. “Time to Think Small” said the headline: but was I the only one to find the disconnect? According to the publication 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom homes of 220sqm to 330sqm - is a small property. Since when did this count as small? I thought small was a 55sqm apartment, I thought very small was a 35sqm studio?

Australia doesn’t tend to have the space problems of the cities such as New York or London but we do like to complain about the price of houses and the inability for the 20-somethings to buy their first home.

Recently, a real estate agent told me of a young couple, no children, who didn’t buy a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom standalone house which was in their budget range in their preferred suburb, because it was too small for them! I had a potential tenant reject a 3 bedroom rental property they inspected because the bedrooms which opened off the lounge - “wouldn’t give their girls enough privacy”. The children’s ages? About 5 and 7!

I think maybe we don’t have a first house affordability problem in Australia, we have a mismatch in wants and needs. In London when I was seeing the world on the cheap I shared a 3-bedroom 1-bathroom house which had 6 of us living there permanently, plus a couple of short-term visitors sometimes. The kitchen was minute and included the washing machine and the WC was in the bathroom. It got busy at times but it was odd to ever be at home alone in that house and we all became good mates.

Perhaps though we need to stop blaming “the market” for the extoriant prices and look harder at our so called wants which have got all mixed up with our needs. Lets be realistic: a couple will fit quite neatly into a 2-bedroom apartment. But we have too much stuff I hear the cry: well maybe you could hire a storage unit for the “essentials” - or better yet sell them off at eBay: are they that important?

So if you think you or maybe your children can’t afford a home consider these innovative suggestions;

• children can share bedrooms
• children’s bedrooms don’t need to be large, they only need to fit a small single bed a desk and some cloth’s storage;
• 3-bedrooms, 1-bathroom works quite well for 4 people and saves on the toilet cleaning.
• a parent’s retreat can double as their bedroom;
• an extra games room is an extra room to clean, and furnish.

A couple of years ago I remember seeing one of those truly dreadful survivor type TV programs when a modern rich, Californian family had to build their own home in a make-believe Pioneer Family ranch. This particular family bitched and complained the entire program: the 2 young teenage girls hated it. Until the last episode when they were filmed in their huge 2 storied, 5-bedroom, 4-bathroom mansion. The girls said they felt kinda lonely - the house was so big their Mom had to use an intercom to call them for dinner and compared to essentially all living together in one barn, they felt isolated and alone in their beautiful house, it as too quiet.

Photo Credit: Pioneer Family