Finance guru Mark Bouris tells young Aussies how to climb property ladder amid cost-of-living crunch
As the nation grapples with a housing affordability crisis, young Australians are finding it almost impossible to save enough cash for a home loan deposit.
House prices across Australia have reached all-time highs, with the medium home value in capital cities now sitting at a mammoth $927,000 as home loans and rental costs outpace income growth.
However, a new phenomenon has emerged among young Australians, with high school graduates increasingly opting to pursue vocational education and training pathways as opposed to obtaining tertiary degrees.
Bouris told 2GB's Ben Fordham that young people should seriously consider pursuing trades and said the benefits were undeniable.
'Some of the wealthiest people I know are builders who start out as a carpenters or who start out as electricians,' Mr Bouris said
'Being a tradie is one of the greatest careers you could possibly think of.
He said that university no longer provided students with a concrete pathway to employment and urged young Australians not to be bogged down with a hefty HECS debt.
'On the flip side, university does not a guaranteed a job anymore,' he said.
'University does not yield an automatic job. Degrees are expensive, they take time it's a bit of a bludge and you are going to be seduced by a whole lot of things going on at campus.
He said that despite his two sons attending university, they did not work in a field related to their studies and reiterated the workforce had become more competitive.
'I've got sons that went to university and that have got university degrees, and they are not even working in the territory that they studied,' he said.
Mr Bouris also revealed he refused to pay for his son's university fees.
'They have HECS debts because I wasn't going to pay for the university and with university you do the HECS debt and you pay it off yourself,' he told Fordham.
'These blokes who started a trade at fifteen already own their own house by the time they are twenty."
In recent years university enrolments have experienced a sharp decline while students pursuing vocational courses and apprenticeships made up 7.8 per cent of all tertiary Australian students, a marked increase from previous years.
Bouris said young Australians looking to enter the property market were 'nervous'.
'Most of them cannot afford to borrow any money or buy where they want to live, nobody can afford to buy where they want to live these days so they can't borrow enough to buy around where they have grown up and most young people therefore just give up,' he said.
'People between the ages of 20 and 35, our experience in that cohort is that they are saying we will never own a property, that is the most unfair lack of Australian value that exists in our country today.
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