Alice Stolz

When we came back to Australia, we were suddenly almost 40-year-old first homebuyers with three children.

And I think the thing to remember is while everybody around us had sort of bought their house 10 years prior because we'd lived abroad, we hadn't done that.

And what it meant was that there was no way of catching up.

And I see that amongst first-time buyers all the time now, which is why I think

you know, if it's about buying an investment property to start off in the market, if you can do that, that's a better thing to do than doing absolutely nothing, I suppose.

Because for us, we were just overwhelmed and we were happy to compromise on space.

But the reality was we had three children, so we could only compromise to a certain extent in that regard.

And it

It's why I really implore first-time buyers to really think about the size of the footprint they're buying in, the postcode that they're buying in, the type of property.

At the moment, units are much more affordable than houses and that won't remain that way forever.

But it is the case at the moment and I do think it's an opportunity for first-time buyers if they can bend their mind around not having a big house, as we said, on a quarter-acre block, you could get an amazing opportunity with a unit that could be a fantastic investment property.

So it's about thinking about that dream differently from how it was when we all grew up.

It has.

It's an incredible trend, I think.

And what it does do is allow people to maintain the lifestyle that they want, because we know particularly for this current first homebuyer generation, you know, that they do love the lifestyle they're living.

And there was that obviously article years ago about sort of they're not willing to give up smashed avocado.

And I think for many of them, it's really about they want to maintain a lifestyle that they feel they've sort of earned and that they deserve.

And I think we have to respect that every generation is different.

That's what makes us all incredibly interesting.

But I think this idea of rent vesting is they can have that lifestyle, but they're getting their foot in on the ladder so that when they do, if they do want to be an owner-occupier, for example, they can sell that property or ideally they could keep it.