DIARY OF A BUILDING INSPECTOR…01/10/2026

The house you can afford is not the house you want…

Jason just got home from a pre-purchase building inspection for a young couple in their mid-20s. They were trying to buy their first home in our regional area.

The house was around $800,000. And honestly? It was a shitbox. It needed a heap of maintenance just to make it halfway nice, and the body corporate situation was… less than ideal. These weren't people buying some extravagant dream home. They were young working Australians trying to get a foot on the property ladder.

And they were stretched to their absolute limit - the girl was crying by the time they were done from the injustice of it all that sticks in the throat. Paying that much for so little, but what is the other option? Renting forever while rents are rising year after year. We know people in their late 30’s who are still renting, bitter every day about putting that money on someone else’s mortgage.

That got me thinking about what Australian property prices actually mean for young people today.

The average full-time Australian adult earns around $2,084 a week before tax. That's an average, not a median, and it includes the entire workforce — not just 25-year-olds starting out.

Now put that against an $800,000 mortgage. At around 6.2%, repayments on a $800,000, 30-year loan are roughly $1,125 a week — before rates, insurance, maintenance, body corporate fees and the general cost of keeping a house standing.

It's no wonder young Australians are struggling.

Another uncomfortable piece of the housing puzzle: most people probably can't afford to buy in the area where they grew up anymore. So to be near your family and friends, you need to contort yourself financially.

It’s not all doom and gloom, but the definition of “getting into the market” has changed.

It's a smaller house. It's an apartment. Maybe further from the beach, the cafes, the schools or the town centre. Maybe a suburb — or town — you never imagined living in. That's not failure, it's compromise.

And eventually, you move again and upgrade closer to what you really wanted in the first place.

Now in our 50s, we couldn't afford to buy our own house if we had to “do it all again” tomorrow, which explains exaclty why there’s a new demographic of people scratching around for housing: 40-50 year olds who have recently divorced. One house becomes 2 smaller properties that both need space for the kids!

We got in when the numbers were different.

Young people today are playing a completely different game. The question isn't whether the game is fair - it isn't.

The question is: how do you play the hand you've been dealt?