A first home buyer generation with other priorities?
The executive chairman of Aussie, John Symond expects investors will continue to dominate property purchases into 2014.
He sees this as "a long term fundamental shift" in the property market.
It comes as first home buyers typically failed to compete against investors in what Symond called the many hot property pockets of many capital cities during the spring selling season.
First home buyers are absenting themselves from the market at a time when the conditions are actually rather favourable for them given interest rates are at historic 50 year lows and mortgage repayments as a proportion of average disposable incomes are lower than for much of the last two decades.
John Symond reckons the current potential first home buyers are preferring to invest in shares and rent in apartments nearer their workplaces or CBDs.
Symond sees part of the solution for the Federal government to look at creating tax incentives for first home buyers to save for a deposit.
There is the existing first home buyer saving accounts scheme introduced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which after plenty of patience offers a terrific honey pot, but just doesn't seem to have gathered much traction.
Yes the required home buying deposit has risen considerably as prices rose faster than incomes - from around 2.5 times the average disposable household income in 1985 to around 4.5 times now - but maybe there are other life priorities that has triggered this apparent baulking at the requisite deposit hurdle.
It's a little early to judge an entire generation on one overly-zealous selling season, but home ownership rates have been in decline since the mid-1990s with the most substantive drop being among households in the 25-44 age bracket.
Any such demographic shift will be a fillip to investors who not doubt have some anxiety over issues of supply and demand especially in the apartment rental market. they'd be watching the recent rather contradictory rental vacancy statistics with for instance SQM having Sydney rental vacancies increasing while the REINSW had them reducing.
It's also a little exaggerated to suggest as Robert Gottliebsen, the Business Spectator columnist did, that the home ownership dream was fading, at least in the inner city, "increasingly replaced with a tenant relationship with Chinese landlords."
Lastly John Symond warns that first home buyers, who now make up about 13% of all loans written, should avoid the temptation of going after very low deposit loans as they can lead to financial stress.
