You know how today’s aspirational youth sit around looking at property prices and lamenting the fact that even a housing slump hasn’t made property remotely affordable? Well, there’s a new easy solution: cut down on the wagyu steaks!
That’s the suggestion made by an Australian judge regarding mortgage stress and the need for young homebuyers to instead “make do” with more “modest fare”.
Now, the context in which Justice Perram made this statement is important: it was in his Federal Court ruling that Westpac had been justified in assuming that those who held a mortgage with them would budget accordingly to afford repayments rather than going into deep examination of their daily expenses.
The ASIC had challenged the bank over this matter, claiming that it was signing up mortgagees without adequately establishing that they’d be able to service their loans. And thus did Justice Perram deliver his soon-to-be-classic line:
“I may eat wagyu beef everyday washed down with the finest shiraz but, if I really want my new home, I can make do on much more modest fare.”
So the lesson here for young people is clear: get into the judging game stat, because apparently it’s all wagyu steaks and shiraz!
It’s an exciting update to Bernard Salt’s notorious 2016 column in the Australian in which he snidely suggested that if young people want to own a house they need only give up their smashed avocado on toast, thereby becoming crowded King Leader Of The Outraged Boomers.
As Martin Niemöller so nearlty wrote: first they came for our avocados and I said nothing, for I had wagyu beef…