The Instagram account for millennials who love property but can't afford it

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘avocado’? Perhaps you envision a plate of sizzling hot fajitas with guacamole on the side, or fun brunch dates with your best pals on a weekend. Or maybe you think of the crushing weight of a fading dream, as housing affordability plummets to critical levels.

Last year, 35-year-old Melbourne property tycoon Tim Gurner went viral after he summarised the millennial struggle to own property as an inability to abstain from nice things, like avocado.

“When I was trying to buy my first home I wasn’t buying smashed avocados for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” the millionaire famously said on 60 Minutes.

Were millennials really destroying their chances at home ownership with each bite of pricey smashed avo toast? 

Image: Curbed

While the original avocado commentary came from Bernard Salt's derisive column in The Australian, associating the rise of expensive café culture with the growing chorus of complaints that housing was too expensive for first-home buyers, it wasn't until Gurner appeared on 60 Minutes that the issue was propelled onto the global stage.

Gurner’s understanding of an entire generation (his generation, no less) of housing affordability issues had ‘viral’ written all over it, precisely because it wasn't an understanding at all. The brilliantly out-of-touch sentiment ignored larger societal context, including the financial advantages Gurner himself received.

As the story swelled, the history behind Gurner’s own finances began to appear, like how he had received a $34,000 loan from his grandfather to kick-start his deposit on a business.

There were endless hot takes, headlines and sarcastic memes written around the globe on smashed avocado inhibiting property ownership, and suddenly, the humble avocado became a beacon of millennial excess.

In the lead up to the one-year anniversary of the avocado-infused generational war, Curbed decided to create an Instagram account dedicated to avocados and how that translates to your property-owning dreams.

“Behold @theavocadodream, our new (millennial pink) ‘Instagram magazine’, dreamed up for millennials who love homes but can’t afford them. We cover homes on the market for $1 million or less, and break down just how many years of avocado toast it would take to purchase the property,” says Curbed.

They even tell you the local haunt for smashed avo near the house you can't afford.

Here are some of the best posts so far:

This dilapidated darling in LA could be yours for the equivalent of 193 years of avocado toast.

This crazy home is an absolute bargain at US$550,000 (or 215 years of avocado toast) -- and comes with every furnishing, including a custom-built Cadillac.

Read more: Hands down, this is the weirdest house we’ve ever seen

What about a studio apartment the size of a closet for 135 years worth of avo on toast?

Or this wood-panelled geodesic dome in NorCal wine country for only 99 years? You could still be alive to see it purchased! Double win.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BemLyNnnJlj/