A month into the new banking era of mortgage lending caps, I am already hearing anecdotal tales of quieter open homes, vacated auction rooms, and buyer frustrations. Whereas previously the housing market rivalled that of supermarket frenzies witnessed every 24th of December, now there is an eerily silent scene awaiting vendors and agents. I am confident that in the coming weeks there will be surveys, studies, analysis by industry players detailing the marginalisation of certain class(es) of people shut out of the market by the Reserve Bank. The likely victim? First-home buyers.
With house prices as they are, supplies still in shortage, and now financing becomes just a bit harder, it looks like all odds are stacked against first-home buyers. Though I continue to maintain that it is not the Reserve Bank’s role to dispense social justice by way of enabling first-home ownership (even to the detriment of the financial stability of the country), it is hard not to feel sympathetic. Homeownership has such an universality, especially in a settlement society, that we cannot help but be emotionally invested in its outcome. I find myself rooting for first-home buyers with a very similar display of earnest fervour I usually reserve for Dickensen victims. I want to see first-home buyers getting an equitable deal for their first property just like I wanted desperately for Pip to overcome his childhood surroundings and adult hubris. But the funny thing about social justice is that we are so often guided, and blinded, by emotion that we lose sight of the broader issue. The people who are shut out of the market are not just first-home buyers, they are low-deposit (first-home) buyers. This is the class of people who pose the greatest risk in an economy that is increasingly fuelled...
