Things Sydney people will say when they talk about property (and what they really mean)

There comes a time in every Sydneysider’s life when the following will happen: your university gang who were once more interested in talking about how to save the world will start talking about property at dinner parties, and one member of said gang will buy a house that will leave everybody else furiously gossiping about how much they spent on it and if maybe they sold a liver (etc.) to fund it.

Though, to be honest, there’s not much speculation needed these days, since it’s pretty easy to do some light investigation online into what a friend paid for their place that has a sun room AND a swimming pool (a SWIMMING POOL!), and it can lead to some awkward feelings. Mostly around the questioning of one’s life choices that have meant that a swimming pool is not in your own foreseeable future.

The etiquette around talking about cold hard cash still means that you can’t really ask someone what they paid for that four-bedder in a tightly-held, on-the-gentrified-side-of-gritty inner-suburban locale. Instead we do a delicate dance that is positively laced with property innuendo (not as sensual as it sounds), a dance that is ultimately about seeking reassurance that we will all be OK. Below, the things Sydney people will say when they talk about property, and what they may really mean.

We got in at the right time

This is perhaps the most commonly uttered phrase and also the most annoying. Because it’s either uttered by someone who bought a house decades ago in what was then a slum and is now, oh I don’t know, Surry Hills. Or by people who somehow, through contacts – sorcery? – managed to buy into a suburb before it got hot. Either way, someone is unbearably smug and someone is unbearably envious. Not pretty.

Did you get a good price?

This is code for trying to find out how much richer your friends are than you without actually asking them.

We’re probably going to go up 

The next stage of Sydney property shop talk is renovations and a really clever way to go about it is to talk about going up – often it’s about necessity, but it also sounds like you know about things like DA rulings and council approval and all the other key phrases that you will need to throw into a conversation.

It’s not our forever home

This is what people say when they’ve bought something a little small, dank, noisy and pock-marked with the disappointment of this being all there is. It’s a hopeful phrase, it brims with promise. It will become a mantra when the pipes break, when you discover the dry rot, when you realise “cosy” is real estate speak for “cramped”.

Two-minute noodles for us now!

Watch out for that there humble brag! This is a gently self-deprecating way to show off a bit. Which is something you are of course very entitled to do. After all, you just bought a house!

What schools are you zoned for/what schools have you put your (not yet born) child down for?

Inevitable.

It’s good to get our foot on the ladder

To borrow from Joan Didion, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. Sydney property buyers will always say this, and mean it … most of the time.

I’ll never own a bloody house

No deeper reading required.