There’s a line doing the rounds this week from an investment commentary piece that’s worth sitting with for a moment: “They’re not sophisticated investors. They’re policy dependents.”

It’s a clean hit. The kind of sentence that gets screenshot and shared before people have properly thought about whether they agree with it. And I’ve been turning it over for a couple of days, because my initial reaction was “yes, exactly,” which usually means I should be more careful.

Reading through recent discussions about housing affordability brings back memories of endless spreadsheet calculations and sleepless nights when I was house hunting a few years ago. The current debate about 2% deposits for $1.3 million homes has me both concerned and frustrated.

The numbers simply don’t add up. Someone earning $100,000 trying to service a $1.3 million loan isn’t just ambitious – it’s financially reckless. Even with government schemes offering to cover 40% of the purchase price, we’re still talking about massive repayments that would consume virtually every dollar of take-home pay.