This is from a blog on the Sydney Morning Herald 31st August 2007:

Blame it on the Boomers

While Kath and Kel live it up on a butcher's income and no mortgage,
Kim and Brett struggle to get by. This says more about the fortunes of
baby boomers than it says about a butcher's income I suspect. The big
question is what happens when baby boomers sell their properties in
droves in approximately 20 to 30 years?

You see, the 4 million-odd baby boomers by shere numbers have stumbled
upon great prosperity. Their bulk has driven up house prices at a rate
that is not likely to be repeated. They will have amassed the kind of
wealth in their lifetime that most generation X and Y-ers will only
achieve through winning Lotto.

Born between 1946 and 1961, baby boomers paid off most of the mortgage
just in time to invest in property in the late 90s, right before the
last property boom of course. Their insatiable appetite for investment
property is probably the starkest difference between them and the more
frugal generation of their parents.

The boomers, now mums and dads of would-be homeowners, are coming to
terms with the grim lifestyle legacy they will leave future
generations. Their sons and daughters will slavishly work to save
deposits and struggle to pay off mortgages throughout their lives. To
add insult to injury, baby boomers are expected to live much longer
than any other generation before them, so X-ers can forget about
receiving an inheritance until they are retired themselves.

Boomers had free education, cheap housing and flexible family
structures. X-ers on the other hand will try hard to not feel
resentful that their anxious lives with two incomes, imposing HECS
bills and unaffordable housing will hardly rank in the same league as
their now affluent parents.

Whilst baby boomers prop up house prices, generation Y may well
discard the label of home ownership as 'The Great Australian Dream'.
Whereas previous generations held home ownership as bordering on
sacred, a right even, generation Y will take it or leave it. If it's
not near the city, it's not worth living in apparently.

Baby boomers created a huge surge in property prices in their
lifetimes but what happens when they sell? Is a global house price
crash looming in the next 20 to 30 years?

For information on property prices go to www.homepriceguide.com.au
Posted by Michael McNamara
August 31, 2007 12:16 PM