For context, I’m a Westie born and bred. My job recently has required me to work around the Sutherland shire area, and I’ve noticed a strange trend when talking to locals.
Almost guaranteed within an hour or so of talking to them, they’ll find a way to tell you how much they bought their house for, with bonus points from the oldies who also tell you how much it’s worth now.
I don’t give a single fraction of a shit about real estate prices in the shire, nor does my job require me to know or ask, it just seems like a topic literally every local always works into the conversation. Is there any reason why?
Idk a lot of empty nesters around there bought for dirt cheap in the 70s-90s when everything was being established, and then held onto the family home for a few decades, and now have assets worth over a million.
They seem to take some kind of personal pride in making the 'right' decision that has led to this 'windfall' when they were largely just doing what everyone else was doing, and it was through no skill of their own. I think there is an element of shock in there too, that a home that they know is the exact same has gone from a few dozen k to over a mil, they can't even comprehend it and are so gobsmacked that they need to share it with everyone around them, unaware that anyone younger or poorer is very well aware of housing inflation and doesn't find it to be a fun little anecdote.
If you make $150,000 today, you have as much ability to put a deposit down on a house as someone making $29,000 in 2008.
I graduated HS in 08. If only I had bought a house when I was 17 making $11/hr at Best & Less. cries in poor
I’m guessing you mean that in terms of house prices compared to salary? Because I guarantee nobody was giving a loan to someone making $29k in 2008. Which, if your maths checks out highlights how fucked the housing market is right now.
Yes indeed, I meant in terms of house prices compared to salary. Bottom line: shit’s fucked.
Grew up in the Shire, lived there ages 10 to 25. I don't know what I was doing screwing around and wasting time in year 7 in 2008. I should have been buying houses :p
PS I have since been very much priced out of the Shire. Bought a 3 bedroom house in Western Sydney for 775K...the price of a Shire shoebox apartment.
howdu come up with that? house prices havent 5xed from 2008 have they
Basically this.
Some people just don't achieve much in life, so they trumpet the good things they stumble into.
It's not a shire thing. Spend a few days at any ski lodge this winter and you'll see.
Have you ever spoken with someone from Manly?
Cammeray is up there, too.
Look, i bought my apartment in Campsie for 5 bananas and a mango and now it is worth 10 bananas and a durian.
"You will have to take those tax-free capital gains from my cold dead hands"
-every Australian homeowner
Isn’t this most people in Sydney?
It’s a very Sydney thing. I live up the coast now and nobody really discusses houses or what they paid.
I only bring it up if somehow home ownership comes into the equation, more so as an explanation as to how on earth we have a house. As to say, I understand that it ultimately was luck. But don't ever mention what it is worth now. I honestly don't even know what it is worth, cause I gotta live somewhere, so unless I wanna reverse mortgage it, the increase in price does no help in any way.
If you bought a place within spitting distance of the beach for $35K in the 70's, you'd be feeling pretty smug.
Yeah probably. I'm not coastal to be clear :p
This is Australia ... you know damn well what your house is worth lol
This is Aussies in general. Was in Japan and had the misfortune of being sat next to a group of Aussies in a restaurant and this is all they talked about for the subsequent 1hr.
Aussies: the biggest fear of all other Aussies in Japan (or SEA, or London, or…)
Avoid Hakuba lol, at least half the people there were Aussie and the fire festival there had a Temu Jackie O as DJ
Couldn't be worse than the real one.
Sorry about that, my bad.
Years ago I read of a region in Africa where people would ask "How is your house?" (ie state of repair) followed by "what are you eating?", which were probably the two things of greatest concern.
Here in the first world we focus on the monetary value of everything and discuss how we earn and spend it as if this is the point of our lives.
To be fair, couldn't those questions serve a similar purpose - i.e. to size you up in the social hierarchy?
The point of the greeting is concern about the other persons welfare - is your shelter good, do you have food - not how much money have you got.
If you want to have a good life, stop climbing social ladders.
I don't disagree with the second point, but what evidence do you present that the greeting is more out of concern about the other person's welfare than the establishment of a social hierarchy?
"Hey, how ya goin today?"
By your logic, is this standard Australian greeting an insincere gesture that has nothing to do about the other person's welfare but is instead a nefarious attempt to size up someone else's place in the social heirarchy?
MANY cultures around the world have social greetings that have some basis in asking whether the recipient of the greeting and/or the recipient's personal/family circumstances are favourable. Naturally, in cultures that place a stronger emphasis on collectivism and family rather than strict individualism, the casual social greetings reflect this because it is considered normal to ask about someone's home/family just as much as it is to ask about someone as an individual.
Australia: "how ya goin?"
UK: "you alright?"
Malay: "apa khabar?"
Yoruba: "Ilé ń kọ́?"
All of these are common social greetings; some are variants of "how are you," or "how is the home (ie family)" based on whether the predominant cultural norm is based in individualism or collectivism.
Thinking that a social greeting you're not personally familiar with must be some kind of suspect attempt to ascertain someone's social credit instead of just being an entrenched social norm based on an entire society that values more than just the strict individual is......honestly it's a fucking weird take. Presumably, you take offence to anybody who asks you "how you going" for the same reasons, yeah?
Of course not. I would, however, suspect the intentions of anyone in Sydney who asked me "Which suburb do you live in" or "What school do your kids go to", because that's what the subject of this thread is about.
OP is not raising the point about people in the Shire greeting him with "How ya goin today?".
This is a Sydney thing. Confirmation and survivor bias that you made the ‘right’ choice with property.
The killer reply is "how fast did you pay it off?"
When I was working seccy, another ex AFP was also. He said he paid off his house in 5/10 years because of all the overtime.
It can be good is you can stand it, YMMV but I just found it interfered too greatly with my non-work life. Also, half the money was going in income tax anyway.
I think that’s a Sydney-wide phenomenon to talk about property prices.
This is a Shire thing? I've been living in the Shire for 8 years now and work all over Sydney, and shire people don't talk about house prices any more or less than a lot of other places where a lot of people own houses. I feel like there's a lot more valid criticisms you can make of people in the Shire lol
Its a bit more prevalent in the shire but its kinda everywhere. All the old people want to brag that they bought a house for $7 and a bag of grapes and everyone else just wants to complain about paying too much.
It’s not a particular suburb thing. It is just people showing off. If you have manners or a bit a class then money matters are private. If people want to know they can usually find out. They should not be telling anybody
Lol everywhere but Sydney, if they could, they'll yell about how much their house is worth from the balcony of their inner west terrace (but would be secretly depressed that they currently owe $1.4 million dollars to the bank for 30 years because of it...)
This is an Australian thing. Plus constantly talking about their latest ‘Reno’
I was talking to a mate of my Brother-in-law about his new place in Newcastle. It took him seconds to tell me how much the value has increased by in the first few months of living there.
I think dumb people don't have anything else they can talk about.
The best is when you tell them how happy you are that things are looking up in ‘Penrith by the Sea’
I thought that was the central coast
Nah, that’s Mount Druitt with a view
Nah, that’s Campbelltown by the Sea
Nah, that's Wollongong!
If all the glaciers melt, I think that will apply.
😂😂
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It’s because it pisses them off
That's a bit of a generalisation, might be confirmation bias. For instance, when I bought my house in the shire for $950k in 2016 (it's worth $1.4million now) and introduced myself to people in the street, none of them mentioned how much they paid for their house /s
I’m from the south west but work in the shire often, the amount of conversations that either end or go very differently when I tell them I’m not from the shire is insane lol
Same reason Sydneysiders will ask you what school your child goes to.
Not because they care but because they are dying to tell you how cool the school is that their child attends and infer they are better than you as they live vicariously through their kids.
This was one of the biggest shocks to me when I first moved to Sydney from the UK. I don't have kids, but people asked me where I went to school, as if they'd have heard of it, just so they could tell me where they were sending their kids as if I would have heard of it. I thought Aus had moved past all that British class system stuff, but instead you've just changed the metric of superiority to overt discussion rather than the more subtle distinctions like how people dress, compose themselves, and their use of words.
It's "imply" by the way.
Fun story: when I was in my very early thirties, my (mega wealthy) employer's (mega wealthy) father - who was, on paper, a part owner in the company that employed me but had literally nothing to do with the business day-to-day - came into the office and one of the first things he asked me was "what school did you go to?"
When I did a kind of "???? WTF?" chuckle and looked at him in confusion (because what kind of dude in his 70s is asking fully grown adults this question?) he just grimaced with disdain and said "oh. I see. Public." and walked away.
To this very day it blows my mind that this old guy was a millionaire many times over, totally retired, but somehow still thought "what school did you go to?" is a normal question to ask a career professional in her early thirties - and not only that, but very clearly judge me for it. Honestly just SO bizarre.
As an international student with the neat ability to mimic the Aussie accent, it tickled me whenever people asked me which school I went to.
Of course, when I responded I only recently landed in Australia, I naturally became 2nd class in their head, but eh, thats fine by me.
this is absolutely not a thing in most sydney people - i wager you've been spending time with the poshos.
This isn't Shire-specific.
Everyone I local know, only brings up the price of their home, if they've moved in recently.
The same reason one of the first things people ask is 'what do you do' (meaning for money). They need to know where to fit you in the social hierarchy. Where you live, what you do and where your kids go to school. The expectation is you will respond by telling them where you live and how much you paid, so they can tell if they are better than you.
I nearly always ask what do you do and have zero interest in how much money someone makes or where they fit in the social hierarchy. It’s curiosity on what they spend their time doing or if it somehow relates to what I do, small talk to try and create a connection to find if there’s something to genuinely talk about or if it stops at small talk.
"I'm a serial killer, Keith, and sell a bit of expired food to nursing homes. Why, what do you do?"
My standard reply to that question is usually “i play soccer on sundays, i like gaming and photogrpahy” etc Unless they’re specific and ask what i do for work of course.
It's called small talk.
small talk is neutral subjects like sports and weather.
Yeah nah, small talk can totally be about what do you do for work.
You don't need to bring out the income graphs and tax brackets to start a convo about what they do during the week. And you certainly don't need to gamify it reddit-style like its the sims or some weird shit.
The expectation is just a polite response whilst you lads shoot the shit.
Ridiculous. Work takes up the majority of people's time, we live in a capitalist society unfortunately. To ignore the topic of someone's profession because it's you think people are trying to apply some type of caste system to you is strange.
Or perhaps it's projection on your part.
Worst part is if you're doing well and better than them, they'll dislike you for it. If you're doing worse, they'll have this whiff of gloating superiority that carries into the relationship.
This is Sydney.
I only tell people about my house if they ask, surely there's more interesting topics to talk about
I think people will openly and unashamedly ask how much you paid for your house, and most people will answer too, or give a round about figure. Given most of these things are public record, they’ll work it out anyway if they really want to. I haven’t really experienced people openly boasting about how much they paid for a house, unless it’s like a property purchased a million years ago for 12 shillings and it’s a conversation around wow look at the investment I stumbled upon.
Obviously they are yet to cost downsizing.
I feel like all over Sydney all everyone talks about is the housing market.
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Only way to cope with the increase in traffic and congestion in that area, is the thought that at least that 3 bedroom 80s brick shack has gone up in value.
When I lived on the north coast of NSW people from Sydney used to come up for holidays and then tell us how many houses they bought while they were holidaying - that would then sit empty for most of the year while we had homeless women sleeping in their cars. Disgraceful.
I think it’s a Sydney thing.
I’m a bit old school but I think it’s icky. I also don’t like being asked.
Correction: How much the BANK paid for their house. They don't have cash, they have assets and loans. (Grew up there and still work there).
100% a Sydney thing. I hear it heaps from "born and bred Westies" at work too. I even hear it from recent migrants at work (apparently property-brain is contagious).
They're looking for validation, really pathetic. Haha they must just hate it when they meet people from places in Eastern suburbs like Bellvue Hill (11m median), Vaucluse (6m median), Paddington (4m median), Woollahra, Elizabeth Bay etc who dont bang on about prices or houses because just mentioning the burb they live in is enuff to know they've been bested.
Or even “Poy-Pie-Pah”!
Yeah i mean that’s probably why they bought the house in the first place
One thing to mention is that a lot of people felt like they lived in a dump if it wasn’t near the CBD.
My first house I grew up in the 90’s was next to an empty field and that house sold for 300k. Now the suburb is completely suburban with wide streets and all nice houses that aren’t cookie cutter houses.
It’s definitely an Aussie thing mate.
You hang with weird people. I’ve never ever heard that from the shire. Ever
If my sister is anything to go by, it's because they have very little else going on in their life. They'll also reply to anything positive you have to say about any landmark/bar/cafe/restaurant by asking if you've been to an abysmal equivalent in the Shire.
I don't think this is a shire-related phenomenon. It's basically anyone who was in the market prior to 2010 will often wax lyrically about how much they paid for their house.
From the older or younger generation?
Buyers remorse 🤣
We don’t do that in the Inner West. Cos we’re real bruv.
I think it's cos we rent lol
Granted we did sell an investment property in the Southwest for $2.1m six weeks ago.
You’re doing work on someone’s house, seems like a logical path of the conversation?
Never said I was working on someone’s house (because I’m not)