A woman who revealed how much she paid for her first property in a brutal reality check for young Australians has ruffled feathers online after suggesting how they can save their money.
Older Australians were approached by property finance platform Coposit in several videos posted on TikTok where they were asked how much they forked out to buy their very first home.
Some of the answers left younger Australians stunned and baffled as they represented a huge contrast to current house prices amid a cost of living crisis in the country.
A 72-year-old woman in Sydney said she paid just $82,000 in 1985 for a one-bedroom house but admitted it was not cheap at the time and it was in line with what she was earning.
“It was all relative to what I was earning… that’s what I could afford,” she said.
“I was just lucky to have that house now 40 years later, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a house at all. I paid it off a long time ago.”
The woman sparked criticism in the comments after she offered a piece of straightforward advice for how young Australians could take steps to buying property.
“If you’re a young person you have to be willing to either share, you have to pull your resources and you also have to sort of maybe not live so lavishly. Maybe you’d have to give up the old coffee and avocado and toast,” she said.
While many commenters respected her take on the housing market and the commitment it took for her to buy her first home, others branded her “out of touch”.
“She said a few good things but ruined it with the avo toast argument,” one said.
“No way she pulled the old avo on toast card 😂,” another added.
“It’s always the coffee and avo on toast,” a third said.
The woman also said the current housing crisis was affecting people of all ages, admitting she knew of older Australians who were “really in trouble” and living in cars.
She also acknowledged Sydney had become “so overpriced” and that entering the property market in 2024 was much tougher than when she purchased her home.
In a separate video, an older couple revealed they paid $28,000 for their first property 48 years ago and also recognised there is more difficulty in the property market now than when they were buying.
“We were able to pay about 30 per cent (deposit). It was easy when we were young – and they had what you call capitalisation, so if you had children you got a family benefit and you could take that through until they were 16 as your deposit,” the woman said.
“It was so much easier then. It’s terrible now. It’s so hard to get (a house).”
According to data from Domain, the average house price in capital cities in Australia sat at just over $1.1 million at the end of the March 2024 quarter.
Houses in Sydney are the most expensive, with an average value of more than $1.6 million.