Wealthy baby boomers are snapping up apartments across Sydney to bolster their self-managed super funds, helping to dash the hopes of frustrated first home buyers.
Agents estimate super fund buyers have doubled since last year - some snapping up whole apartment blocks - as the numbers of first-timers in the market drop to a trickle.
Freelance writer and TV producer Tom Whitty has had a gutful. ''I'm saddened that both my girlfriend and I will have no choice but to work well into our 30s so we can squirrel together a deposit for that two-bedroom dive that she's so sure is just around the corner,'' he said in a familiar tale on smh.com.au.
Advertisements along with being tired of real estate ''sharks'' and ''spruikers'' and ''snake oil salesmen'', he lamented the tax breaks for investors that would ''inevitably lead to a backlash on election day'' if they were removed. His story drew 862 comments.
Rocco Pirrello knows exactly how he feels.
The 23-year-old, who lives with his parents on the lower north shore and works in marketing for an insurance brokerage, has been looking for six months and is fed up with apartments selling for far more than agents say they will. ''The price guides are definitely underquoted in almost every case,'' he says.
The O'Farrell government's lure of $15,000 to buy a new property doesn't wash with him either.
''They're still too expensive,'' he says. ''I've gone to a few of the display apartments, but you need to fork out another hundred grand for basically the same thing but new.
''And it seems a lot of the people who are there are investors.''
It's a far cry from the first-timer glory days of 2009 when there were government grants of $14,000 - even $21,000 for new properties - plus stamp duty exemptions.
These days first home buyers of established property get nothing.
Ray White Elizabeth Bay's Laura Bitar estimates the number of investors using their self-managed super funds to buy property has doubled since last year, while the number of first home buyers has halved. ''At auctions, the investors are definitely outbidding the first home buyers,'' Ms Bitar said.
She remembers an auction day in 2011 - as those attractive first home buyer incentives were about to run out - where the properties at all 13 auctions went to first home buyers.
''We did sell four properties under $500,000 to first home buyers last month, but they all had their parents helping them.''
With the government incentives gone, parents paying at least part of the deposit is the only solution for many.
''My parents did help out a little bit,'' said 30-year-old lawyer Anthony Luk, who bought a two-bedroom apartment in Pyrmont for $653,000. He already had substantial savings.
''It just allowed me to get into the market a little bit sooner,'' Mr Luk said. Like many first timers, he's not keen on auctions so he snapped up the property beforehand. And he wasn't attracted by the government's inducements to buy new.
''I prefer older properties because I can see how it's maintained and managed,'' Mr Luk added.
Adrian Wilson, of Wilson Property Agents, who sold the property to Mr Luk said he was still seeing some first home buyers.
''For professional couples with a double income and a bit of a deposit, purchasing at $600,000 isn't such a stretch,'' he said.