One of the factors I see in my household surveys is wealth transfer from one generation to another, stoked by the paper wealth created by the massive upswing in home prices. We see more first-time buyers being assisted by the Bank of Grandparents, alongside the Bank of Mum and Dad. This means there is a historic wealth transfer is under way in Australia, for those fortunate enough to have parents or grandparents with assets, tough on those with none of those onramps to property and wealth. With a large chunk of that wealth stored in residential property assets, the shift is already reshaping property market activity, and will intensify in the years to come.
In my surveys I encounter a theme quite often, households who cannot get into the property market while their friends and colleagues seem able to do so. So how come some can and some cannot?
Well, it could be that others are simply just better at saving. Hustling. Investing. Negotiating salary. The second: they’ve got a loan of cash injection from the Bank of Mum and Dad or Grandparents (though often its not clear whether they will have to pay it back. And third, they are a beneficiary of the great intergenerational wealth transfer.
Demographic research firm McCrindle just published a report and they say Baby Boomers are passing on an estimated $6.2 trillion of capital to their children and grandchildren.
Since 2013, the percentage of 25 to 34-year-olds who think that Australia is a land of economic opportunity, where hard work brings a better life, has fallen from 80 per cent to 51 per cent. The same trend was observed across all age groups.
“Belief in the fair go … appears to be declining. We estimate that overall agreement that Australia is a land of economic opportunity has declined by 16 percentage points since 2013,” the researchers found.
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