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Claire Ho and her partner, both 23, were determined to buy a property. Instead of taking holidays, shopping and dining out, they decided to save most of their earnings.
In 2023, after limiting spending during COVID, the Sydney-based couple bought a four-bedroom house in Queensland’s Ipswich. It was the first home they saw on their hunt, and serves as an investment.
The decision to buy there was pragmatic, given the cost of buying in the harbour city. Ho, an accountant, is also delaying leaving her parents’ house.
“Saving is a big priority for us. Ideally, I want to move out of home in the next two to three years. But given the current economy and the markets and how much rent is ... in Sydney, it’s not ideal,” she said.
Ho is not alone. Generation Z, aged between 14 and 29, have garnered a reputation for being financially conscious amid global economic pressure and climbing house prices.
The cost of a typical Sydney house is now $1.76 million, and Melbourne $1.11 million, Domain data shows, and the federal government last year expanded its 5 per cent deposit scheme in a bid to help. Some experts say young Australians are now thinking about homeownership earlier than previous generations, although as rents soar, others are rationally opting out.
According to NAB’s Australian Wellbeing Survey for Q4, 18 to 29-year-olds had the strongest saving intent of any age group.
Kos Samaras, director at research company Redbridge, said Gen Z were “more financially cautious”, living longer with their parents and rethinking their occupations. Some are postponing having children.
Gen Z are “the most financially stressed generation in the country,” Samaras said.
“If they’re living in Sydney, they will think long and hard before pursuing a particular career in, whether it’s nursing or teaching, purely based on the housing situation in the city.”
Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey said economic stress was a key concern, with 55 per cent of Gen Z citing cost of living as their top worry.
For Ho, financial security guided much of her decision-making.
“My partner and I have been engaged for almost three years, but we haven’t had our wedding,” she said. They are thinking of delaying it as they prioritise saving.
Gen Z was thinking about property much earlier than previous generations, according to Angus Gilfillan, chief executive of mortgage broker Finspo, where about a third of all new customers are Gen Z.
“More people in their early 20s are jumping online to run the numbers and book a quick chat about ‘what it would take’ to buy,” he said.
“For many, it feels like the odds are stacked against them. They see friends paying high rents but still struggling to build a deposit, and they’re very aware of how different things were for earlier generations.”
Jane Body, general manager at Think Forward, a younger people-led organisation focused on intergenerational equity, said, “economic security is the number one thing … that we hear is on people’s minds at the moment”, with wealth in Australia built through homeownership.
“So, in order to, quote, unquote, survive in the system, young people are being forced to participate in it,” she said.
Westpac’s Home Ownership Report from late 2025 found that 35 per cent of Gen Zs plan to buy a first home in the next five years.
Noah Gordon, a 19-year-old university student from Sydney, is already thinking about buying a property. He said he’d initially look for an investment, which he hoped could be a stepping stone to buying somewhere to live.
“At the moment, it’s probably more about financial security,” he said.
Gordon lives at home, works about 24 hours a week as a delivery driver, saves, watches what he spends and is cutting back on dining out.
“So, just eating at home before I go out to uni, packing my lunches for work, just to save myself from buying expensive meals when I’m out,” he said.
Still, some Gen Z were opting out or being forced out of buying as costs and interest rates climb. It now takes more than 12 years to save a 20 per cent deposit for an average house, compared to six years in the early 1990s, Grattan Institute found.
PRD chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo said, “it’s almost that they’re split in two,” with some Gen Zs thinking they could never own a house, and another group that wants to have a home and build wealth, but knows they need to start early.
For those able to purchase, Mardiasmo said they could make informed decisions because of their “high exposure to rich data, to information, and in-depth reports”.
Enosh Tampoe, a Gen Z mortgage and finance advisor at Smartmove, who is also Ho’s broker, said his Gen Z clients were probably the most “research-savvy” he’s worked with.
Younger clients often come to him after watching YouTube videos, TikTok finance content and podcasts, and using Reddit or Facebook.
“The first conversation is often filtering out the noise that they get from a lot of those contents,” he said.
Ho and her friends “share knowledge” on their financial plans and how they are investing or saving. “It’s really good to bounce ideas, and, sometimes I’m learning every day when I’m talking to them,” she said.
Gordon thought his friends were his “main influence” when it came to financial knowledge. He was thinking about putting money into stocks or exchange-traded funds.
“It’s mainly just when I’m hanging out with them, playing sport with them, just chatting about it casually,” he said.
Property is one of the most popular savings goals at Stockspot, an app that offers portfolios of low-cost ETFs, said chief executive and founder Chris Brycki.
“That tends to be people who have an ambitious goal of buying a house in somewhere between three, five, 10 years, but realise that house prices just keep getting away in Australia and keep going up,” he said.
“And it’s so hard to save up the deposit, that they want to make sure the savings they do have are working hard in the lead up to being able to afford that deposit.”
Across 2025, Stockspot saw $37.5 million withdrawn for property purchases across 534 clients, with the average holding period before withdrawal around five years.
The bank of mum and dad remains key. Many of Tampoe’s first home buyer clients were getting “some form of support from parents,” either gifts or loans, he said.
Gen Zs were more willing to buy with a partner or sibling, or rentvest, “just to get a foot in the door,” said Gilfillan.
Tampoe said some Gen Z clients were seeking investments in regional Australia.
“The main difference I’ve seen with the Gen Z group, compared to older generations … many of my Gen Z clients are already thinking about a portfolio,” he said.
“Thinking of property as more of an asset class, rather than a lifestyle purchase.”
Ho and her partner are considering more investment properties. They hope to amass enough financial security to have a passive income, while pursuing other interests.
But the future properties are unlikely to be in Ho’s home city. “It’s a general sentiment that Sydney, you can no longer afford, unless you’re a millionaire, pretty much.”
