Millennials like me are turning 40. So, why don't we own a house yet?
As an 'old millennial' with only a few more years in my thirties left, it struck me that I don't at all feel like the 'old' adult I thought I would be by now and how, in just one generation, so many 'norms' aren't in fact normal at all anymore.
Plenty of my friends moved to rent in bigger cities to chase income and job opportunities, many swapped human babies for the fur kind and I don't have a single friend that has a house with a picket fence in sight.
Staring down the barrel of any significant birthday often forces us to confront what we expected life to look like vs. what it actually is. One of the common gripes for people my age is 'shouldn't I have bought a property by now?'. They are usually stressed and worried that they've left it too late. That maybe it's a dream that won't ever be a reality.
But Millennials are facing a very different property market than their parents did. According to the latest Cotality Home Value Index (June 2025), the national median dwelling price is now $837,586. In Sydney, it's over $1.21 million. In Brisbane, it's just over $926,000. That's a huge increase from only five years ago, with values up more than 75 percent in some cities like Brisbane and Perth.
Yet income hasn't kept up. ABS data shows the average Australian full-time salary was just under $103,000 in 2024. That means a typical home in Australia now costs more than eight times the average income. In contrast, homes in the 1980's and 1990's only cost around three to four times average income. The average age of a first home buyer is now 36 years old, it was 27 years old in the early 1990s.
Research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows home ownership levels peaked amongst Australians aged 40 to 44 in 1981 (77 per cent), and it has been tracking down since - with only 65 percent of people in that age band owning their home in 2021. That's before the last few years of significant house price increases.
With high cost of living pressures, slow wage growth and more recently large rent increases - more and more people in their late 30's are finding it hard to save up a deposit, especially single income households.
Even as interest rates edge down, affordability is still a problem. While the national median price only rose 0.6 percent in June, that still added nearly $6,300 to the cost of the average home in one month. And over the first half of 2025, the median value increased by around $22,749. That's an average increase of approximately $3,790 per month, most people cannot out save that level of growth in the market and manage day to day costs.
At the same time, home sales are slowing. Cotality's latest data shows housing turnover is tracking well below average, with 16.7 per cent less listings than the five-year average.
Less stock generally means one thing; more competition. More competition normally = prices increases. So where does that leave millennials turning 40?
Firstly, I've heard quite a few people of late say '40 is the new 30' and maybe they aren't wrong? All of the life milestones of generations gone by, are becoming ones that people are now doing later in life (if at all). It's important to remember that comparing yourself to the people around you, or what prior generations had achieved by your age, is rarely helpful.
If you're serious about getting on the ladder soon, you're going to need to sit down and map out a strategy that is realistic. Some people are exploring co-ownership models with friends or family. Others are getting their parents to go guarantor, or buying in regional areas or choosing to rent long term while investing elsewhere. The traditional path of buying a home is no longer a given.
For millennials, turning 40 might not look exactly like you thought it would, but the wisdom and resilience you've gained from life so far can be used to help you find new ways to move forward.
Jessica Brady is a qualified Financial Adviser and leading money expert. She is on a mission to educate and empower everyday Australians to be better with money through her online money programs and via the Financially Fierce Podcast. You can learn more at jessicabrady.com.au
This article is general advice only, all of the comments above do not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs.
Before acting on any information, you should consider the appropriateness of the information provided and the nature of the relevant financial product having regard to your objectives, financial situation and needs. Jessica is licenced through Paragem Pty Ltd - AFSL 297276. ABN 16 108 571 875, Authorised Representative Number 001259972.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
32 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
ASX set to fall, Wall Street rises as Tesla rallies; Microsoft cuts 9000 jobs
US stock indexes are drifting higher on Wednesday, ahead of a highly anticipated report about how the US job market is holding up amid uncertainty about President Donald Trump's tariffs. The S&P 500 was up 0.3 per cent in afternoon trading and on track to set a record for the third time in four days. The Dow Jones was down 50 points, or 0.1 per cent, in mid-afternoon trade, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8 per cent higher. The Australian sharemarket is set to retreat with futures at 4.53am AEST pointing to a fall of 24 points, or 0.3 per cent, at the open. The ASX added 0.7 per cent on Wednesday to close at a fresh record. The Australian dollar was steady. It was fetching 65.83 US cents at 5.03am Treasury yields were mixed in the bond market ahead of Thursday's report, which will show how many jobs US employers created and destroyed last month. The widespread expectation is that they hired more people than they fired but that the pace of hiring slowed from May. A stunningly weak report released Wednesday morning, though, raised worries that Thursday's report may fall short. The data from ADP suggested that US employers outside the government cut 33,000 jobs from their payrolls last month, when economists were expecting to see growth of 115,000 jobs. Loading 'Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,' according to Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. The ADP report does not have a perfect track record predicting what the US government's more comprehensive jobs report will say each month. That preserves some hope that Thursday's data could be more encouraging. But a fear has been that uncertainty around Trump's tariffs could cause employers to freeze their hiring. Many of Trump's stiff proposed taxes on imports are currently on pause, and they're scheduled to kick into effect in about a week. Unless Trump reaches deals with other countries to lower the tariffs, they could hurt the economy and worsen inflation.
The Age
33 minutes ago
- The Age
ASX set to fall, Wall Street rises as Tesla rallies; Microsoft cuts 9000 jobs
US stock indexes are drifting higher on Wednesday, ahead of a highly anticipated report about how the US job market is holding up amid uncertainty about President Donald Trump's tariffs. The S&P 500 was up 0.3 per cent in afternoon trading and on track to set a record for the third time in four days. The Dow Jones was down 50 points, or 0.1 per cent, in mid-afternoon trade, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8 per cent higher. The Australian sharemarket is set to retreat with futures at 4.53am AEST pointing to a fall of 24 points, or 0.3 per cent, at the open. The ASX added 0.7 per cent on Wednesday to close at a fresh record. The Australian dollar was steady. It was fetching 65.83 US cents at 5.03am Treasury yields were mixed in the bond market ahead of Thursday's report, which will show how many jobs US employers created and destroyed last month. The widespread expectation is that they hired more people than they fired but that the pace of hiring slowed from May. A stunningly weak report released Wednesday morning, though, raised worries that Thursday's report may fall short. The data from ADP suggested that US employers outside the government cut 33,000 jobs from their payrolls last month, when economists were expecting to see growth of 115,000 jobs. Loading 'Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,' according to Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. The ADP report does not have a perfect track record predicting what the US government's more comprehensive jobs report will say each month. That preserves some hope that Thursday's data could be more encouraging. But a fear has been that uncertainty around Trump's tariffs could cause employers to freeze their hiring. Many of Trump's stiff proposed taxes on imports are currently on pause, and they're scheduled to kick into effect in about a week. Unless Trump reaches deals with other countries to lower the tariffs, they could hurt the economy and worsen inflation.
Sydney Morning Herald
42 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Albanese is the conservative who mugged the Liberals. Let's hope he seizes the moment
Anthony Albanese is a man who likes props. In the 2022 election campaign, he regularly brandished a one-dollar coin to emphasise his support for a pay rise for workers on the minimum wage. And in the lead-up to this year's election, he employed his Medicare card as a talisman to ward off Peter Dutton's supposedly evil plans for the nation's healthcare system. Clearly, his approach has worked. Everyone has a Medicare card and Albanese was wise to embed in the public consciousness that Medicare is a Labor Party creation, implemented by Bob Hawke's government in 1984 against the fierce opposition of the Coalition. Because Medicare, for all its shortcomings, is an entrenched and popular feature of everyday Australian life, the Labor Party of today has been able to leverage Hawke's long-ago policy success to its great advantage. There's upside for the ALP in portraying itself as a defender of institutions, as it can make the party look less risky, and Albanese leant into this heavily during the election campaign. At his recent post-election address at the National Press Club, he outlined the reasons Labor had won a second term. Electors, he said, had voted for Australian values and for doing things 'our way' – that is, not like Donald Trump and Trump-wannabe Peter Dutton. He also cited Labor's 'commitment to fair wages and conditions, universal Medicare and universal superannuation' that 'set us apart from the world'. In some respects, it's a conservative formulation for a centre-left party: preserving what's already in place. And that signals some potential downside for the government. Universal super was the joint brainchild of Paul Keating and the ACTU's Bill Kelty as part of the union movement's Accord agreement, which also gave rise to Medicare. The historically transformational nature of universal super has been brought into sharp focus this week, with the attainment of the compulsory 12 per cent super contribution and the wider discussion about super balances in the millions of dollars. Inevitably, talk of that achievement invites comparisons between the current Labor government and the all-conquering five-term government led first by Hawke and then Keating. Hawke and Keating wasted no time in office. The Albanese government is 38 months old. Inside the same timeframe, the Hawke government had held two summits – on the economy and on tax – and introduced Medicare, a new incomes policy, an assets test on pensions, floated the dollar, changed the banking system, begun the march on super and produced a comprehensive new package of tax measures. Loading Somewhere within the Labor Party, people will eventually start to ask what a Labor leader 40 years from now will be fighting to preserve from the Albanese years. The course that the prime minister is pursuing – backed strongly by Labor's national secretary Paul Erickson, who has definitely earned his status as the nation's campaigning guru du jour – is the one that secured the government's second victory. In short, the government's first priority will be about delivering methodically on its promises, namely reducing HECS debts, building 1.2 million homes, continuing the push towards renewables, increasing the number of Medicare urgent clinics, and continuing to keep inflation down. That makes sense, especially since the national political scene is now a bunch of players who have, to an extent, been mugged by reality. Everyone is a smartie after the event, but no one expected a Labor landslide. The government wasn't geared up for it. The Liberals had even less of a clue. None of the polls predicted it. YouGov got closest; its central projection was 84 lower house seats for Labor – a mild increase on its majority but still 10 short of the actual, stratospheric result.
