By Josh Gardner, who refers to the Mona Lisa as ‘content.’
DID you know you can buy your own property? Me neither, until all my friends with rich, generous parents started doing it. Even some of the less well-off ones have done it, but only if they moved to Newport, wherever that is.
I was shook. I thought that actually buying things had died out. Sure, people used to buy books and DVDs, but that was in the ancient, backwards time of the early Noughties. Doesn’t everyone just do the equivalent of streaming somewhere to live these days? Apparently not.
Turns out it’s better to own than to rent because you’re not throwing an extortionate amount of money down the toilet every month. And while buying a house sounds like a boomer thing to do I decided to give it a go. Mainly for clout.
Imagine my surprise then when I discovered the property market is run by gatekeepers called estate agents. Not only do they want you to have a job and something called a good credit rating, you also need to have a deposit running into the tens of thousands. I felt pretty L + ratio.
At my current rate of saving it would take me roughly 4,000 years to scrape together a deposit. The only obvious flaw in that plan is that house prices will have risen by then. There had to be another way, and preferably one that required no effort.
My first idea was to tap up my folks. That’s what everyone my age does in the property section of the Metro if you read the articles for long enough. Mum and dad are still laughing at my request for £50,000 though, so I might have to come back to that.
Undeterred, I set about the laborious work of looking for solutions on Google. Talk about hitting the jackpot. There were millions of hits, with tabloids offering lots of patronising advice for people like me. I’d probably be sorted by the end of the week.
All I had to do was stop buying takeaway coffees, avocados, and Netflix and I’d magically make the money in no time. Which is odd because I can’t afford any of those things as it is, but I decided to go along with it. After all, this advice was printed in an online newspaper, so it had to be true.
I’ve been abstaining from stuff I never buy anyway for a couple of days now, but I’m still stubbornly in the red. Perhaps it will all kick in tomorrow and I’ll suddenly have enough cash spare. Failing that, I’ll just have to politely ask my boss to quadruple my salary.
To keep my spirits up I’m reminding myself that buying my second house will be easier. All I have to do is rent out my first place for a massive profit to some poor Gen Z-er and make it even harder for them to buy. It’s a great system which has been specially designed to work really well. At least that’s what I’ll say when it’s my turn to exploit it.
