With many Australians finding it increasingly difficult to buy a home, we take a look at how affordable housing really is.

LIKE many young Aussies, housing is a major issue for Brisbane IT professional Nick Burge, only the 24-year-old is frustrated for different reasons than most.

He’s frustrated by Gen Y constantly complaining about how they can’t crack the property market, and thinking politicians should be making it easier for them to buy their first home.

He’s frustrated by suggestions that parents should “shell out” and hand over cash to their kids to set them up with a new house.

And he’s mostly excited, but still a little frustrated, by the fact that he still has to wait another three months before he can move into his brand new two-bedroom apartment, rooftop pool and all.

In stark contrast to the widely accepted narrative that young first home hopefuls are locked out of the market, Mr Burge managed to save for a deposit on his own home, after paying in full for his first car, without handouts from his folks by the age of 23.

And he wants his peers to know that they can do it too.

“A lot of my friends are in that situation where they think they’ll never own property, and it’s quite frustrating because it’s probably more a lack of research on their end,” he tells news.com.au.

“Yes, it’s extremely hard. I know that from my own experience. But nothing worth doing comes easy.”

While living with his parents in Brisbane and studying IT and design at university, Mr Burge was at first furious his mum and dad were happy to sink money into his education, but a car was out of the question.

Looking back, he says it’s now the best thing they could have done, setting him on the path to become a self-funded success.

“It was hard to comprehend ... They were financially capable that they could help me, but they said from the beginning that they weren’t going to,” he says.

“They said if I wanted a car I could save for it myself, so I basically just challenged myself for a few months to work so many hours and rack up that money, which also reduced the amount of time that I could spend money.

“That made me really want it, and want to set goals. To me it was buy a car first, buy a house second.”

The student worked three part time jobs over the uni break and kept up as many hours as he could during semester. He also managed his money carefully, investing in different term deposits and keeping his spending money in cash.

When his investments had matured and he had enough saved, Mr Burge withdrew from his four accounts so he could have all the money in the one place, and went to the dealership with a wad of fifties.

“I had $20,000 in notes, in cold hard cash. I took it to the dealership and we had to count it like 10 times to make sure it was the right amount,” he says.

“The guy was like ‘this is the first time this has ever happened to us’.”

The 18-year-old drove from the dealership in his brand new Mazda 3 with a zero account balance, so it was clearly the right time for the teenager to start planning his first property purchase.

Motivated by his home ownership dream, and the need for experience when he graduated his degree, Mr Burge started freelancing as a web designer and eventually landed a part time job at a start-up which turned full-time once he graduated.

He researched houses but found an apartment would be more attainable, so decided to invest in a two-bedroom apartment in Coorparoo, only about 4km from Brisbane’s CBD.

In April last year he secured his first property with a price tag of $389,000. That’s about 40 per cent cheaper than the average two bedroom house price in the area. It’s a home, and that’s what he was after.

Mr Burge had done all his research. Buying off the plan meant he required only a 10 per cent deposit ($38,900). He decided to save another 10 per cent by the settlement date to avoid paying mortgage insurance.

Although he’s not a fan of handouts, he’s also planning to apply for Queensland’s $15,000 “Great Start Grant” for first homeowners purchasing new homes. He sees it “as a reward for my hard saving”, and intends to use the money “towards some nicer furniture when I move in”.

With housing affordability consistently cited as the greatest source of pressure for Australians, particularly young ones, it’s not going away as a political issue.

Malcolm Turnbull’s comments that parents should “shell out” and support children to buy their first home attracted a huge amount of criticism that the Prime Minister had a limited understanding of the issue and was “out of touch” with the property-seeking public.

Mr Burge was also incensed by this comment, taking to LinkedIn to pen an essay in response.

He’s on board with the Government’s choice to make no changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, and he didn’t think the quip made the PM seem out of touch. Rather, he thought it highlighted another cause of housing affordability struggles — parents being too generous.

“We’re having the wrong conversation,” he wrote.

“The root solution has nothing to do with external financial aid for the younger generation. It’s a personal one ... parents are the worst culprits.”

Mr Burge slammed the notion that parents should assist their kids in buying a car or putting down a deposit on a house.

“My parents chose a different direction. Instead, they offered to put some money towards my university degree,” he wrote.

“I didn’t realise it at the time, but they had given me an even greater education — the reward of hard work.”

Mr Burge admits he’s lucky. He knows not everyone has the luxury of living with their parents and avoiding rent and other costs that come with leaving the nest.

“I know not everyone’s in that position, but people can achieve different goals at different stages, and I think the discussion we need to be having is more around financial responsibility and educating people a lot younger,” he says.

“I suppose compared to other people, I don’t have a gym membership, I haven’t signed up for Netflix, I just spend my time probably working, I do a cheaper form of exercise, I have boardgame nights with friends. It’s just a different sort of lifestyle I guess, different priorities.”

For now, his top priority is paying off his mortgage, and his next big goal will be to expand his property portfolio.