First Home Buyers Need A Decade For Deposit
With housing prices on the rise, so too are the deposit demands.
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Just over one in 10 (11%) of first home buyers now need to save for more than 10 years before breaking into the housing market.
A poll of 1028 first home buyers by comparison website Finder.com indicated that would-be buyers are taking longer to reach the 20% deposit threshold as the average deposit reaches six figures amid booming property prices.
One in four need between five and 10 years, nearly two in five (38%) need between two and five years, while only 7% manager to save the deposit within a year.
According to Finder, the required deposit for an average loan had risen by 16 per cent nationally in just two years, reversing any deposit affordability gains and taking the national average deposit price to $106,743.
First home buyers in NSW require $128,469 and $113,092 in Victoria. The average deposit in Tasmania has climbed to $81,438, to $85,710 in South Australia, to $95,784 in Queensland and to $92,784 in Western Australia.
“While low interest rates mean the cost of paying your mortgage each month has come down, rising property prices are lengthening the amount of time required to save for a deposit,” Finder spokeswoman Sarah Meggison said.
Further, more than half of first home buyers (53%) indicated they are spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their mortgage repayments, a sign of mortgage stress.
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The actress and her husband, comedy writer Dave McCary, spent more than three years restoring the house, which is one of the priciest properties for sale in the Texas city.
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In 2021, actress Emma Stone purchased a historic estate in Austin, Texas, with a plan to move her family there. Four years later, she has instead decided to put the property on the market.
The actress and her husband, comedy writer Dave McCary, are asking $26.5 million for the newly renovated estate, according to Eric Moreland of Moreland Properties/Forbes Global Properties, one of the listing agents. The 1.25-acre property, located in the upscale Tarrytown neighbourhood, will be among the most expensive on the market in Austin.
Stone and McCary have spent more than three years renovating and restoring the Texas property, Moreland said.
A spokesperson for Stone didn’t respond to requests for comment. Moreland said the couple’s New York business interests have expanded since they started the remodel, and while they hope to live in Austin eventually, it doesn’t make sense for now.
The couple, who are co-founders of the production company Fruit Tree, own a roughly $12 million apartment in lower Manhattan, according to property records. Stone is slated to star in the upcoming contemporary Western film “Eddington.”
It’s unclear what Stone and McCary paid for the Austin property, since Texas is a nondisclosure state . The Georgian-style brick house dates to around 1940, making it one of the oldest estates in the area.
The roughly 10,000-square-foot estate includes a main house with four bedrooms and a two-bedroom guesthouse. The property also has a pool, a hot tub, and a garage with a screening room and entertaining space above.
As part of the renovation, the couple removed, cleaned and reused all the exterior brick. They also reconfigured some of the living spaces, opening the kitchen to the living room for a more modern layout. It took more than a year just to install the millwork in the screening room, said Moreland.
The contractors are now putting the finishing touches on the property, he said.
The “La La Land” actress has a track record of buying and selling her homes for significantly more than she paid. In 2022, she sold her blufftop Malibu, Calif., home for $4.425 million after buying it for $3.25 million in 2018, according to property records.
Last year, she sold her home in L.A.’s Comstock Hills neighbourhood for $4.3 million, significantly more than the $2.3 million she paid in 2019.
Austin saw an influx of new residents during COVID, but many of those are now returning to the East and West coasts, particularly workers in the tech sector.
While the market “has come down to earth a little bit” since the pandemic-era boom, Moreland said, he has seen a number of $20 million-plus deals over the past few months.
Moreland has the listing with colleague Diane Humphreys.
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The seller, Steven ‘Bo’ Belmont, is asking $39 million for the under-construction project.
