The number of ‘kidults’ (young adults) living at home with their parents in Australia is on the rise. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 43% of 20-24 year-olds and 17% of 25-29 year-olds are living in their family home. A generation ago, these percentages were much lower.
The problem
The current percentages of young adults living at home for longer is likely to rise with the casual jobs of young people being the hardest hit by the economic impact of COVID-19. The unemployment rate among those under the age of 24 is more than double the overall rate.
Many kidults simply won’t be able to afford to move out of home with tenuous or no employment. They also will be less likely to qualify for a lease or a mortgage on a place of their own. Unfortunately, housing affordability in Australia is declining, and Melbourne property prices are among the most expensive in the world.
Besides these financial considerations, kidults living at home inevitably creates space and living problems for both their parents and themselves. It’s a time of life when everyone tends to want more space, not less.
But there is a simple solution!
The solution
Building a garden studio (granny flat) in your yard can give you and your kidults the space you all need to live independently and affordably. Garden studios are fully self-contained, coming with living and sleeping areas, as well as bathroom and kitchen facilities.
Living in a garden studio will increase your kidults capacity to save for their own home, rather than them moving out and renting their own place just to get their own space. Building a garden studio will also increase the value of your home.
It’s not just a short-term solution either. When your kidults eventually move out, you could use your garden studio for your elderly parents. It’s a fact of life that we’re all living longer and many of us will increasingly need to look after our parents as they get older. Due to medical advances, the average life expectancy is now 84 for men and 87 for women.
You could also rent a garden studio out on Airbnb once your kidults have moved out so that you can make some extra cash for yourself.
How we can help
At Garden Studios in Melbourne, we architecturally design and build garden studios to suit a wide variety of needs. You can check out our range of stylish designs here. We can also customise our designs to suit your individual situation. We’ll take the time to understand your specific needs and we’ll provide you with the right advice.
Best of all, our prefabricated design and construction processes help to make our garden studios extremely affordable and quick to build. We also use the same processes to do affordable modular home extensions if that’s an option you’d prefer.
Contact us today for an obligation-free chat to find out more about how we can help you!
