It will take at least 10 years for housing to become affordable, after a study shows rise in prices nationwide. Picture: ThinkStock
- Buying a home looks possible ... in 2020
- Sydney still Australia's least affordable city
- House prices outstrip rises in average incomes
WANT to buy a house? You'll have to wait another ten years - if you're lucky, according to new research.
A massive hike in median house prices across the country in the past decade - up 147 per cent to $417,000 - has far exceeded the 50 per cent rise in average incomes since 2001.
The result led to a ballooning of the housing price-income ratio from a manageable 4.7 in 2001 to 7.3 this year - a level deemed "severely unaffordable"
Sydney is still Australia's the least affordable city but houses in working-class cities such as Wollongong and Newcastle are proving just as unaffordable.
A study by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling says house prices will have to remain flat for another 10 years, coupled with income growth, for houses to be affordable again.
"It's not just that housing in Australia is unaffordable, but the issue is how unaffordable it is," report author Ben Phillips told The Australian.
"Ten years ago, housing affordability was primarily a Sydney story, but it has now spread to all capital cities and beyond to most big non-capital cities," he said, referring to Wollongong, Newcastle and the Gold and Sunshine coasts, among others.
The annual rate of inflation of 3.6 per cent to June was the fastest pace since late 2008 and higher than economists expected and outside the central bank's target band.
Sydney remains least affordable, with a typical home costing 8.4 times the average annual Sydney household income, followed by Melbourne at 7.9 times and Adelaide at 7.7.
But when the figures are broken down, Melbourne's inner suburbs are the nation's least affordable, with a 10.2 price-income ratio, the report finds.
And there is little respite in moving to outer suburbs, with bigger house sizes reducing the cost advantage.
The recent slowing in the property market may offer a glimmer of hope for first-home buyers, but internationally Australia trails well behind other countries in terms of housing affordability.
Read more on housing affordability at The Australian.
No comments:
Post a Comment