A 31-year-old woman talks about her struggle to get a house. She says she is ignored because she is not a man.
Sydney resident Brittany Ferdinands also said she has to work two jobs and split her time between living with her parents and boyfriend to save on rent, so she can compete with older, wealthier investors.
Ms Ferdinands has been trying to buy a one-bedroom apartment for between $600,000 and $850,000 in Sydney’s eastern suburbs for a month and has been sharing her experiences on social media.
She said real estate is very much a “man’s world.”
“When I go to view a home, I feel like my boyfriend gets the most attention,” she said Yeah.
“They talk to him and say something like, ‘I believe it, it’s not his fault, he’s just here for support.’
She said that looking for a home means “talking to men all day, every day,” and that the callers to real estate agents and mortgage brokers are all men.
Ms Ferdinands said it is not just her gender that puts her at a disadvantage, but also her age, which puts her in competition with older and much wealthier investors.
Sydneysider Brittany Ferdinands, 31, has shared her struggle to get onto the city’s property ladder
“I don’t really see anyone my age. Most of them are from an older demographic,” she said.
“They definitely have more money than I do.”
She has heard older buyers tell real estate agents that they were looking for another investment property.
This puts her at a disadvantage, because she viewed the houses based on her emotions, and mainly whether she liked the place and wanted to live there.
Meanwhile, investors are “very transactional” and have money to throw around.
Ms Ferdinands said it would be virtually impossible to buy a property in the Sydney area she is looking at without working two jobs.
She works four days a week as a commercial operator and is also employed as a university lecturer in media and marketing.
She even has another side job: creating content,
Mrs Ferdinands said that if she only had her four days’ salary she could “forget” about buying an apartment, but luckily she can save her entire tutoring salary for a down payment.
“Everyone I know who recently bought a house had two jobs,” she said.
Ms Ferdinands said she hardly saw anyone her age at property inspections, it was all older and wealthier investors
She also admitted that she was lucky not to have to pay rent, as she splits her time between her parents and her boyfriend, and once again she put aside money that she would otherwise have had to pay to a landlord.
Ms Ferdinands said many women her age did not have sufficient financial knowledge and asked their fathers or partners for help.
For people who wanted to get their finances in order to buy a home, she recommended a mortgage broker as a good place to start. He or she could help get the paperwork in order.
By doing so and looking at her finances ‘with a magnifying glass’, Ms Ferdinands said the way she spends and saves money has completely changed.
An investigation by financial regulator Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) earlier this year found Gen Z women showed higher levels of stress and concern about their financial situation than Gen Z men.
The investigation by ASIC’s Moneysmart unit found that 87 percent of Gen Z women reported severe financial stress due to the cost of living, compared to 77 percent of Gen Z men
More than half of Gen Z women (57 percent) felt overwhelmed by their finances, compared to 41 men in the same age group.