House prices are getting more and more out of reach for first-time buyers. Credit:Michael Mucci Easy for you, I thought, as he owns his home. But sage advice for the legion of young – and some not-so young – people out there trapped between fear of missing out on future windfall gains and fear of overleveraging into an overheated market. As Sydneysiders celebrate the ignominious milestone of median house prices popping the million-dollar mark, it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and see sky-high property prices for what they are: a product of a deep, grasping materialism that is making some of us rich but most of us miserable. Sure, surging prices are driven by a range of factors: inherent difficulties in land supply in spatially constrained urban centres, excessive push-back against new developments by "NIMBY" homeowners and the incompetence and lack of foresight by state governments to redevelop brown-fill lands and implement functioning public transport systems spring to mind.

We can also point the finger at generous tax breaks for property investment, which grant tax-free windfall gains to homeowners and full deductibility of losses and other tax breaks for investors. In our increasing despair, we can even start blaming foreigners buying property, even though the numbers remain puny compared to the property feeding frenzy of domestic investors. But it's time to look deeper, to our own consciousness, to discover what is truly driving Sydney's property obsession. It's time to admit there's an ugly materialism to Sydney's property obsession that is both compounded by and driving rising prices. Since when did the basic human need for shelter transform into the grasping desire for a two-storey mansion with butlers' pantry and outdoor kitchen/entertainment area?

It's a materialistic merry-go-round that imposes costs on both frustrated would-be buyers and homeowners alike. There is a huge opportunity cost to the money we are spending on housing – what you could otherwise be doing. For frustrated renters, there's the lost weekends of fruitless searching. There's the holidays foregone, the meals out not enjoyed, the constant stress and worry about saving that deposit. For those who manage to get a leg on the property ladder, there come the new stresses of super-sized mortgages. There's the time not spent with children because you're working harder to keep up with payments. There's the extra commuting time because you had to buy further out from your work.

There's the pressure on relationships of money stress. What sort of society are we creating? A richer, but more anxious one. And, in Sydney, a more divided one. Increasingly, younger buyers are being pushed out of inner areas. Inner Sydney is becoming an exclusive club that only the rich, or the sons and daughters of the rich, can afford. It marks a return to a kind of landed gentry, where the circumstances of your birth determine your future wealth, not ingenuity or the sweat of your brow.

Such inequality can breed an ugly sort of envy. It certainly does little to foster social cohesion. And our social bonds are at breaking point. What is it within ourselves that just wants to build these mansions and retreat into ourselves? And once we get there, we get even more inward looking – protect your own, don't take risks, think only of the mortgage and how to get ahead. What other nation could remain glued to TV screens for more than two hours to watch the grand finale of a home renovations program? Our orgiastic consumption of property reality TV shows is troubling indeed. We work harder to keep up with the Joneses, build our mansions, in which we hide watching TV shows about other people's mansions.

We obsess about property at the breakfast table, the lunch table and the dining table. Inside, we are envious and grasping. We are boring. Our obsession with building mini-castles behind picket fences has turned us into a vacuous and inward-looking society. Or perhaps we always were? So, as homeowners pop the corks, some words of advice for my fellow renters.

Take a deep breath, work hard and save as much as you can. Now, let's talk about something more interesting.