The email came through with the subject line ‘REGRET’
The email came through with the subject line ‘REGRET’.
Scott,
My partner and I are both professionals in our early thirties. We bought a house last year and we hate it. We are struggling to adapt to a slower pace of life in the suburbs and have learnt we don’t need as much space as we thought we did. We feel stupid for spending a ton of money on something we can’t stand.
What are our options?”
Erica
Strewth!
There’s more emotion in Erica’s email than a midnight meltdown from my 18-month old:
They hate their new home … they feel stupid … they can’t stand it.
Well, the dream of owning your first home is a lot like parenting a newborn … the thrill rubs off disturbingly quickly … and then the reality of the responsibility sets in:
I’ve signed up for a lifetime of this?!
It’s not hard to understand why Erica is spitting the dummy.
This time last year everyone was FOMO-ing off their face. Interest rates were at all-time lows. The Reserve Bank had committed to no rate rises till 2024. Property prices had risen 30% since COVID. And that’s when Erica and her partner got property-pregnant. And that’s also when everything changed.
Today, the value of her property is going down, and the cost of her mortgage is going up. Way up. In the last three months her repayments have shot up by an extra $565 a month (based on a $600,000 loan).
And some experts are warning that house prices could drop by as much as 25%, leaving people like Erica who bought at the top in a ‘Mortgage Prison’ and unable to refinance their loan in a few years.
So what should Erica do?
Well, my advice would be to stop listening to experts about the economy. As a new property-parent you have zero fluffs to give. All it will do is freak you out and psyche you out.
I know you think you’ll never make it. But you will. You’ll grind it out, meet your mortgage repayments, and eventually get ahead. And then, in a few years, you’ll have forgotten about all the pain you went through, and you’ll trade up your family and do it all over again!
Tread your own path!