Is it time for us to quit whinging and accept our fate?
One Reddit user – u/JokeOk9999 – this morning hit Australia’s aspiring first home owners with a verbal missile. They said we should get used to apartment living, as is done in other countries around the world, and accept “not everyone is supposed to afford houses.”
Their logic? As Australia grows in size, there simply won’t be enough land for everyone to own houses, and the scarce houses with land will be very expensive.
Their solution? Embrace a Big Apple Attitude to things. “People should really change their mindset to living in apartments instead,” the Redditor claimed, posting in the r/ausfinance community.
The Reddit user added: “That’s not to say the government has done a good job with the current housing crisis though. The biggest failure IMO is not developing cities fast though and building up enough good properties. Inventory has been declining way before the pandemic.”
The “unpopular opinion” went down like a lead balloon, with users in the r/ausfinance community pointing out the various reasons why they want a house, not an apartment.
One said: “If I’m having 3 kids with their own rooms when they are teenagers, I need at least a 4 bedroom apartment.”
“Often new apartments have less space per human than a free range chicken has. Made me chuckle when I first heard of it but then it settles into being pretty sad.”
Another wrote: “Good old toothpicks and paperboard apartments. Guarantees that you’ll hear every neighbours’ toilet flush, covid cough, elevator door close, and the rustling of their keys of as they fight their own heavy fire rated entry door.”
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Yet another warned: “There’s an established trend of developers building the worst, tiniest apartments possible” and claimed: “There’s thousands of bad apartments nobody wants.”
The same user added: “If there were good apartments of a decent size or townhouses/duplexes with at least a courtyard or deck, people would be all over them, nobody wants the s*** ones.”
The whole debate was perhaps summed up best by the following quote: “Much easier to get used to apartment living in countries that build decent apartments.”
Another Reddit user warned that “affordable” apartments can give you the worst of both worlds, too. They wrote: “You’re living in a much smaller space, ages away from any good amenities, and you’re paying the same price people were paying for actual houses a few years ago.”
“No wonder people are complaining.”
Weirdly enough, many users claimed the standard of apartments, despite advances in technology, has actually got worse, not better.
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One wrote: “I visited a home open for an apartment in Toorak that was built in the ’60’s. It was delightful. Like a small house inside. Solid brick construction. Then you visit these ‘open plan,’ gyprock dogboxes that are basically unfit for living unless your single and you realise why no one wants them. They barely pass muster as Airbnb’s.”
Another said: “Yep, I once inspected one like this in Brisbane, 60s also, I think. Cupboards you could actually fit your clothes in. A separate laundry. A separate dining space. A balcony you could actually BBQ on. Seems like an impossibility now but back then an apartment actually had to be a house if you wanted to tempt people to live in it.”
Whatever your take on all of the above, we have to hand it to Reddit user u/JokeOk9999; they definitely stirred the pot.
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