26-03-2025
Millennial reveals grim way she was able to buy a 'tiny' property in Sydney: ‘Struggling'
A Sydney woman has shared how she was able to buy a "tiny" flat and said getting into the property market would have been impossible without it. Australia is about to enter the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in the country's history and many young Aussies are now relying on inheritances to get a foot onto the property ladder.
The woman was stopped in the street by property app Coposit and shared that she was 30 years old with roughly $28,000 in savings. She said she was lucky enough to be in the property market, but there was one thing that made it possible.
'My grandfather gave us an inheritance, so I just bought a tiny little flat,' she told the platform, which says it can help buyers into the market with a deposit of just $10,000.
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She said she wouldn't have been able to buy a property without receiving the inheritance.
'Absolutely not. Oh my god, are you kidding? No way, I'd be struggling,' she said.
'I'm struggling even now, though, because I do have a lot of fees to pay and bills coming in, and I don't make that much money.
"So I'm just like, do I sell [my flat]? I don't know.'The woman said the cost of living was 'so bad' at the moment and joked it meant she was 'literally eating for lunch my leftovers that I had the night before'.
'Our employers are not giving us enough money in terms of how much we need to spend to live and it's tough,' she said.
Finder research found $152,775 was now considered a 'good' wage by the average Aussie, while $164,577 was considered a "comfortable" salary.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average annual salary for full-time workers is a little over $100,000, while the median salary for full-time workers is just over $80,000.
More young Aussies are now relying on inheritances to get into the property market, as property prices rise while wages lag behind.
Australian Housing Monitor data found nearly two-thirds of Aussies thought the only way they would ever be able to buy a home was if they received a large inheritance.
Victorian mum-of-four George Fox told Yahoo Finance a $85,000 inheritance from her uncle was the 'bittersweet' reason she was able to buy her first home with her partner a few years ago.
'We've all been told that if you work hard enough, you can buy a home, but I just really don't think that's the case at all,' she said.
'I don't know anyone who hasn't had some type of help in buying a home.'
Baby Boomers, who are Australia's richest generation, are set to transfer $3.5 trillion to younger generations over the coming decades.
Finder research found more than a third of Aussies expected to receive an inheritance in the coming years.
Of those, 28 per cent were expecting a cash inheritance of more than $100,000, 20 per cent between $50,000 to $100,000, and 15 per cent up to $50,000.
A further quarter said they were expecting to receive one or two properties.
