KEY POINTS:
Every Saturday I flick through the Herald's real estate supplement, in much the same way I flick through Vogue at the hairdressers. I'm fantasising - putting myself in the ballroom of the old Remmers mansion, champagne glass in hand, professional caterers in the state-of-the-art kitchen, or striding across the post-and-rail fenced house paddock to saddle my mare for an early morning canter around the boundaries of the Karaka estate.
Who ARE the people selling and buying these amazing properties? What do they do? I remember at the last election people tossing around figures that decreed only 1 per cent of the population earned more than $150 grand a year. Don't quote me on those figures, but they were something like that. The property pages seems to have all 40,000 of them selling their homes at the same time.
There are some extraordinary homes in this country - and the closest I'll get to them is through the newspapers. But that's OK because it's all relative. Young friends of mine have said wistfully that they'd love to live in the People's Republic of Grey Lynn but it's simply beyond them, even on two wages, and they've had to settle for Blockhouse Bay. And I'm sure there are people who'd love to live in Blockhouse Bay but are having to settle for a unit in outer suburbia and so it goes on.
Massey University's quarterly housing affordability study had more bad news for wannabe home owners this week, saying that houses are at their least affordable since the study began more than 20 years ago.
Nearly 75 per cent of an average take-home pay goes on the standard mortgage of a median priced home. In 2002, a mortgage payment took just over 40 per cent of the average take-home pay. Lot of averaging out there, but the upshot is that you need one income to pay the mortgage and another to live on.
And I got a lot of calls on radio from people who were despairing of ever owning a home. One man rang and asked if it was unrealistic to expect to be able to own a home given that he was earning the average wage and he and his wife had decided she would be a stay-at-home wife and mother. The answer, after taking calls and time for some reflection, is yes. He is being unrealistic.
A young couple, just back from Oz, told me that they had saved for a year, living on his wage and saving hers, for a deposit for a house. They are living in an area they don't really like, but it's all they could afford and they're still living on her wage and paying off big chunks of the mortgage with his, so that next year they can move to a better place and think about children.
The first house I ever owned is the one I'm living in now, and the Irishman and I work five jobs between us to pay the mortgage and have some semblance of a life. Luckily, we enjoy what we do but working like navvies to pay the mortgage is nothing new. I remember my parents telling me about the first home they ever bought. Same thing. They lived off Dad's wage and saved Mum's. When my brother and I came along, and Mum had to give up work for a while, Dad worked three jobs. Days, nights and weekends.
As was typical for their generation, they didn't have all the bells and whistles. They could afford a dining room table but not the chairs, so for the first year of their married life, they sat on beer crates topped with cushions. There was a memorable dinner party the day they brought the chairs home from the furniture store.
It would be nice to think it could be made a little easier for young couples, struggling with student loans, to get into their first home. After all, according to the experts, there are huge benefits in home ownership.
You are more stable, more settled, more engaged in your community, your children are less likely to be truants and, as a former boss of mine once said, he loved his employees to have mortgages. It made them so much more appreciative of their job. So there are benefits.
The satisfaction and joy you get from opening the door and entering your own home, is immeasurable. It's tough, planting that first foot on the property ladder.
But I promise you, young ones, it always has been.
