When I first was thinking of buying a house about 14 years ago, I remember looking at the prices and marvelling at how high they were. I remember talking to people in my age group about it. Many of us were still studying at the time and had no idea how the future would unfold or how we would afford our lives.
By the time I actually bought a place seven years later, the prices had almost doubled. I remember going from bank to bank with my begging bowl brimful of hope, praying I’d get the best deal and feeling defeated. When the house I bought came with its own set of hellish issues, one of the only reasons I never sold up and moved on to something simpler was because the prices for everything else kept getting higher. Year after year we waited for the property bubble to burst as everyone kept forecasting it would but nothing could touch it, not even the pandemic.
Not only did COVID-19 not put a dent in the situation but the National Statistics Office has released the latest property price index figures which show that the cost of buying an apartment has risen by 6.8 p er cent since the first quarter of 2022 while that of buying a maisonette has risen by 5.1 per cent in the same period. What makes the latest price increase even more unsavoury is that the cost of buying an apartment has risen consistently every four months since 2018, in a market where supply is more than generous and where unoccupied properties number in the tens of thousands.
All this has happened in a timeframe where salaries have not increased while the cost of living has, which means that people have less money to work with than ever before. Is it any wonder that so many are openly commenting about how our quality of life has gone down and stress and anxiety levels have increased?
It’s almost as if our society is punishing those who either can no longer stay in bad situations or who would simply prefer not to couple up but no longer want to live with their parents- Anna Marie Galea
On top of all this, we are getting to a place where the people who can’t afford to buy a house can no longer even rent because those prices have gone up too. And don’t even get me started on the fate of single people who want to live alone; there is simply no loan high enough to cater for that sector of society which is also on the increase. It’s almost as if our society is punishing those who either can no longer stay in bad situations or who would simply prefer not to couple up but no longer want to live with their parents.
Instead of constantly offering schemes that either don’t work or have people jumping through hoops for the bare minimum, we need to crack down on the property market and end the unchecked greed that has long had this country in a chokehold.
We are being fleeced alive and thrown cents to distract us from the fact that we can no longer afford the basics.
Maybe instead of letting everyone do what they want, the government can actively take steps to ensure that our young don’t have to live in a garage, work themselves to the bone by taking on multiple jobs, or leave the country to have a decent existence. But, as usual, I’m probably asking for too much.