Housing Unaffordabilty: Two anecdotes. In response to yesterday’s post on how Australia’s housing unaffordability crisis particularly affects people in their 20s and 30s, a reader writes:

Really is an issue hitting my generation hard. I have friends who just bought a $1.1m 2BR apartment in Waterloo in Sydney, with $130,000 savings. I try to explain that this is a terrible financial decision and give the reasons (an asset bubble, the recent influx of supply, the fact that record prices and record supply can’t co-exist for very long) but people just start to hate you for ruining their moment!!!

Have other friends, couple, one specialist doctor the other a GP. Both 28. All they want to do is buy a nice house and have a few kids. They CAN’T afford it. What world are we living in where 2 doctors both 4-5 years out of uni can’t afford to raise a family. The mental gymnastics is amazing too. They say things like “the reason we can’t afford a house is that we want to live close to work”. I think to myself geez when did living within 45min of work become a luxury?? That system has to come unstuck at some point.

If the definition of a bubble is a situation where the value of something strongly exceeds it’s intrinsic value then this is 100% a bubble. … Australian’s seem to think housing is some special magical asset class that always goes up.