53% of Gen-Y owns a property……. in Australia.

Realestate.com.au is a major property site in Australia. I think, by far the biggest. In an article by Emma Sorensen in relation to their annual Housing Affordability Sentiment Index (HASI) survey for 2014, it shows that Generation Y (born between 1981 and 1994) is buying property earlier than other generations. Out of those Gen-Yers who has properties, 89% of Gen-Y of them bought their first property before they were 30 years old. While I am not sure about Malaysia, but on top of my mind, the few more capable Gen-Y friends I have really do own properties and they really did buy them before they reach 30! In terms of actually owning a property, over half or 53% of all Gen-Yers already owns one property and 23% owns more than one! 47% even have ambitions to buy a second property within the next 5 years.
I do hope that a similar survey can be done here in Malaysia. Perhaps iProperty or PropertyGuru or Propwall can think about it. 🙂
I have written about Gen-Y before. Read it here: Gen-Y and property There are many traits which I do not lie about Gen-Y.  One example is that majority of them think way too highly of themselves. Even though they have just a few years of working experience, they wanted to buy condos and not even apartments. They think only condos are fit for them. Thus they continue to shout that the prices of condos are beyond them etc. My wife and I lived happily with my sister and my brother in-law for many years in a RM123,000 apartment until I saved enough to upgrade to a condo. The same apartment can still be bought for RM250,000. Do not tell me that this is ‘UNAFFORDABLE’.
However, despite these, I also acknowledge this amongst the above average Gen-Yers whom I know. They are really fast learners. It is hard to change the opinions of the ‘know everything’ Gen-X friends of mine but the Gen-Y staffs whom I had, they soaked up the coaching and mentoring within a short period of time and suddenly when you look back, they were already so experienced! They can also work hard and typically afraid of nothing and will always try to be better and bolder. Gen-X? Well, I think majority are no longer that young these days, so maybe it’s great that Gen-X can work together with Gen-Y, infusing them with the experience and gaining from Gen-Y’s vibrancy. Okay, let’s wait for the survey results from the few companies mentioned above yeah. No idea if any of their editors are reading this though but for a survey to be at least representative, it should be answered by a minimum of 5,000 respondents.
written on 2nd Aug 2014
Next suggested article: Relevance of top 5 future home trends in UK vs Malaysia.