Why Stopping Buying Avocados Won’t Get You A Home

Look's Sarah-Rose puts Australian millionaire and property mogul Tim Gurner's statement on millennials to the test...

If, like us, you love an avocado – whether smashed, sliced, fried or blended into a juice. Then Tim Gurner’s highly publicised comments – criticising millennials for indulging in the ‘pricey’ superfruit and listing them as a potential reason why ‘some’ (read as most) young people can’t afford a house – will have left you shaking your head.

Given the social, political and economic climate of the country and world a little treat, like a lovely avocado, can really go a long way. With smashed avocado on toast being not just a visual treat to everyone’s Instagram feeds but also a highly nutritional (nothing has more mono-saturated fats, to help lower cholesterol than the beloved avo) it seems rather unjust for someone to declare that without them an entire generation would be more likely to be property owners.

Whilst speaking with Australian news show 60 Minutes, millionaire mogul Gurner remarked that ‘when I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying avocados and coffees’ continuing that ‘we’re now at a point now where the expectations of younger people are very, very high’ – thanks pal.

We at LOOK pride ourselves on supporting and celebrating the go-getters who dream big, work hard and challenge the everyday. So, whilst we all appreciate that ‘the people that own homes today worked very, very hard for it saved every dollar and did everything they could to get up the property ladder.’ We, as millennials, know first hand how with low wages and high bills and rent how implausible these things can be. Without the support of parents or grandparents to provide a ‘step up’ onto the property ladder the idea of an average gal/or guy ever saving enough for a mortgage often feels implausible. With many of us already resolved to the fact that they will most likely rent forever treating themselves to brunch or a little holiday (or two) with loved ones are moments that shouldn’t really be judged.

So, whilst Gurner’s view that us millennials ‘want to eat out every day and they want to travel’ is, as generalisations go, mildly accurate the day-to-day reminders of how fragile and short life can be only encourage people to treat themselves to a holiday and enjoy the moments they can. In a bid to prove his statements wrong and let us get back to enjoying our avo and toast guilt free we had a play around with some numbers…

So whilst UK house prices are currently rising at their slowest rate in five years, the average London property still costs £490,718 with first-time buyers requiring an average mortgage of £196,459.

Taking this quite literally, with the average price of a twin pack of supermarket avocados costing £1.78, it would take a wildly excessive 110,370 avocados to equate to a single mortgage. An utterly mad amount even for the most avid avocado fan to consume over a lifetime – let alone in their mid-twenties.

Whilst you’d need to have avoided over 39,371 avocado-based-brunches (based on the average price of smashed avocado on toast, with no eggs being £4.99) to equal the mortgage. This literally equates to having over 107 brunches a day. Utterly impractical.

So, Tim Gurner as much as we love a nice avocado even consuming them en mass on the most absurd scale would never equate to a mortgage. Even two avocado-breakfasts, a week for 10 years would only ‘waste’ £2594.80. Which wouldn’t even make a dent on a mortgage.

Tweet us @lookmagazine to let us know if this would ever deter you from you avo on toast…

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