Guest Post: Average Maltese Salaries Can Only Buy A Garage… Our Property Market Is A Major Social Issue
I shy away from making my voice heard. I have always been like that. Besides being of a diffident disposition myself, I have always felt rather irrelevant – at least, politically. That my voice wafts its way to the corridors of power is unlikely; that it be heard even unlikelier.
Before me, there have been countless others who have tried making their voice heard. Men and women my age. With their own dreams and aspirations for the future. Perturbed by what is happening and by what is to come. Unanswered prayers. Deaf ears, blind eyes.
Well, what I intend to put into words here may very well suffer the same fate. That does not really bother me, so long as I raise awareness, little though that may be.
I find it truly difficult, not least as a young man, but also – and above all – as a Maltese citizen, to stand mute and I cannot help but heave a heartfelt sigh when I look around myself and realise that, contrary to popular belief, young men and women of today have it quite rough.
Firstly, I do admit that young people have grown used to being comfortable and giving hardship a wide berth – not to mention that many young people have developed a damnable tendency of throwing in the towel with worrying haste in the face of the slightest hitch. But let us be reasonable just for a moment and shelve the reproof of younger generations for another time.
We, young men and women, – who have been labelled as ‘pampered’ and, perhaps, to an extent, with good reason – live in a time where it has become very difficult, if not impossible, to start living an independent life. Every young man and woman dreams of buying his or her own place; to wean off their cosseting parents and set about traipsing into adulthood.
How can we, though? How can young men and women ever achieve their dreams, when you have a property market which is altogether, and blatantly, cut off from the reality in which they live?
According to a 2022 NSO report on regional statistics, in the year 2020, the average annual basic salary – before the Government comes along and takes his usual share – was €18,913 (not to also mention the discrepancy that exists between the average annual salary of males and that of females, a most worrying matter which ought to certainly be tackled some other time). That’s nineteen thousand pre-tax.
Do I really have to elaborate how salaries and property prices are so disgustingly disproportionate?
On his own, someone who would like a bank loan to purchase property, and who earns the above salary, can – as per a Home Loan Calculator which one may easily find online – get himself a measly loan of €132,000, with a deposit of nearly a year’s salary and the usual monthly payments. The loan would be paid off some 40-odd years down the line. Is that not a little bit disproportionate?
And one other thing. Can someone tell me what does €132,000 exactly buy you in today’s property market? A one-car garage, perhaps? Two-car garage, if you are lucky? Pull the other one.
If this is not considered a social issue, then we really have not the slightest idea what that means. A social issue is something that negatively impacts a particular group of people in society. What you have, here, is, on the one hand, a property market off the blasted rails, all in the name of a capitalist Malta, slaking and favouring the greedy and, on the other, the paltry salaries of us great unwashed. Is that not a social issue? You can say that again.
Successive governments, of red and blue hues, honey-tongued, smarmy officeholders in all their pomp and pride, left private investors, blinded by avarice, to do whatever they pleased and to line up their seemingly bottomless pockets, resorting to the pathetically hackneyed pretext that the wheels of the economy have to keep on turning (besides the obvious issues of environmental degradation and overdevelopment, which are inimically rotting the country from its inside).
Past governments took a step back and the property market practically became a monopoly of private investors. A round of applause, if you please. Well, in truth, it does not really surprise me that we are now currently facing all these problems, even if they have been brewing for quite a while. However, what I do find so painfully baffling is how no one had the foresight of what was so logically to follow.
Yet, I fear the ship has sailed. Even if deep down inside me, a ray of hope flickers on – still to be snuffed out. Hope that something will be done; that, as in the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the last will be first and the first will be last.
Even if the powerful still somehow find their way back to the top, as is so usually the case. But that they are lowered from their lofty plinth which they have been allowed to occupy for so long and that they let the powerless take their turn, would be a start. A tiny step towards a better future.
And so, dearest Government and Opposition (whatever remains of you, that is), heed the concerns of Malta’s youth. We are swimming right smack in the middle of a riptide. Take action. Help us; we truly need you. Help us.
Mark Asciak is a 23-year-old Maltese youth
Lovin Malta is open to interesting, compelling guest posts from third parties. These opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the company. Submit your piece at [email protected]