As housing prices continue to rise in Aotearoa, the once fathomable milestone of being a homeowner feels increasingly out of reach for most young people. For those of us who aren’t registered to the bank of mum and dad, the ever-growing sum of a house deposit has become an unrealistic savings benchmark. Coupled with a cost of living crisis, the majority of people under the age of 35 are slipping off the bottom rung of the property ladder (or never even got on).

As a result, young Kiwis make do in their rental homes and attempt to make permanent memories in transient spaces. The nature of flatting is ever evolving and non-committal. One day you could be plucking fresh mint from the herb garden you planted, the next you're getting an eviction notice because your landlord's decided to sell the flat you’ve made a home to a property developer who wants to pave over your carefully pruned garden. I suppose off street parking is more valuable than homegrown herbs to some people. 

Compared to our boomer parents' generation of housewarming parties with gifts of Crown Lynn crockery and Kenwood mixers, we’re more inclined to host flat warming potlucks, splashing out on the second cheapest bottle of supermarket wine as a treat. Maybe a good cheese from the deli section. 

And while our parents had the ultimate privilege of drilling holes in walls, we have command hooks and Blu-Tack. We remain adaptable and ready to go, masters of packing our lives into cardboard boxes and rearranging second hand furniture in new spaces every few years.

Despite this all, life moves on. It's just the way we live now, and we haven’t really known any different. Of course, we have heard the fairytales of home ownership passed down to us by our parents and theirs. We’ve tolerated the blame on our overconsumption of avocado toast and oat flat whites as the sole reason for our financial predicaments. 

But for us, those are just stories. And the reality is that we are a generation who are paving an alternative way of progressing into adulthood, skipping major milestones all together - or reimagining ones more suited to us. 

When once it was all about homeownership and marriage, we are more set on trips to Japan or Berlin, supporting our friends’ creative endeavours, purchasing a pair of Margiela Tabis. The list goes on. 

I have wondered recently if there is a correlation between our lack of ability to purchase a home, and what could be described as a more non-committal nature. Not owning a home means we’re able to travel or move anytime – does this fleeting feeling make us more inclined to seek constant career change and hinder the traditional development of relationships? House, dog, marriage, baby? 

Speaking to friends, I found that it wasn’t that no one wanted to buy a house, in fact it is very much the opposite. It's that the possibility of purchasing a house is so unrealistic that many of us aren’t even considering it at all. Instead we opt to spend our savings on overseas experiences, “investment” pieces of designer clothing or art, or simply just getting by day to day.

As one friend morbidly admitted, he was more likely to wait for his inheritance to procure a home rather than being able to ever afford one himself. Although I don’t condone this mindset, I can understand how he justified that as his only possibility of homeownership. When the central Wellington property my parents purchased for $156,000 in their early 20s was recently valued at close to $2m, I began to really evaluate my position in the race. Would I ever be able to afford to purchase a home, and did I really want to? 

Getting on the property ladder is one thing, and maintaining your position is another. If I were able to buy a home, would I be able to afford it? Or even be used to staying in the same place for too long? Have I become accustomed to the impermanence of renting, or attending friends' flat warmings every second weekend? Would I miss having a rotation of eclectic house mates filling the place with laughter and leaving their dishes in the sink?

Perhaps it is chronic romanticising - or is communal living, shared condiments and Sunday night takeaways with people who were once strangers more valuable than a home? Whichever way you look at it, these experiences are irreplaceable and uniquely ours, and more attainable than owning a house could ever be.