Hardwired to own

Property is more popular than porn.

Yes! You read that right.

I went to a seminar recently where Rental Express MD Chris Rolls told us that 42% of people who have access the web view porn but 74% of people who have access to the web check out the real estate.

Sure, some of them are looking at villas in the south of France, dream homes on the Dalmatian Coast or a funky loft in New York, but the majority of people are looking for a local place to call their own.

It’s really no surprise given shelter is one of the fundamental concerns in our life. Everyone should be invested in that idea.

People like to look at property or homes because they feel an emotional connection. Love and greed – or both – are drivers. There’s the desire to have a place which shelters your person, your family and your soul. It something you can make pretty and entertain in. Alternatively, it’s a place which offers good investment return.

Australia is a country so very wired into the notion of home ownership. Unlike our European cousins who in many cities never even consider the idea of owning. Renting just is what they do and they’ll do it for life.

We’ve adopted the post-war view of a house in the suburbs and very much built the foundations of our life around it. In times like this we naturally become rather sentimental about our homes and they morph into even more of a backbone and a blanket. Security equals salvation in this climate; homes become the icons of our lives.

Australian society honours ownership. From advertisers showing off massive plasma televisions to home builders and the government, everyone is trying to convince us this is the best thing to do – and do now. There’s an expectation that owning a home has become a divine right and buyers want the best deal.

The post-Gen X and Y’s are fixated with having things quickly and early and they’ve been partly responsible for the uptake in city apartments. There’s now a generational expectation they will become involved in the property market early rather than waiting to become established in other areas of their life. We’ve wired them to do that and push them at every level.

Balancing that out, their psyche sees property more as a commodity and they have a positive, flexible attitude towards it. Unlike the homes of our grandparents which were homes for life and where the furniture may as well have been cemented to the floor, this generation will live in many more homes over their lives and have fewer or no reservations about diving in.

Property is a symbol about everything good in our society and it’s driving young people to buy in record numbers. If you’re a cynic, you might say that people are using real estate views on the Net as the new porn – to dream about the place they want but may never own.