But having asingle well-paid job just doesn’t cut it anymore.
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A Sydney home buyer now needs to earn more than $340,000 (after tax) to purchase the median-priced home with a 20 per cent deposit,an increase of $60,000 from March 2023,according to recent data sourced from Canstar and Domain. Thank god for the government’s new 5 per cent deposits.
“Today in places like Sydney,the amount of time and effort that goes into saving for a median house deposit could have very nearly bought an entire house outright back in 1970,” says Tarric Brooker,an independent analyst.
In the past five years,the median Sydney house price has risen 60 per cent to stand at a record $1.6 million,while in Melbourne it has risen just over 20 per cent to $1 million.
Consider that the median annual wage is roughly $80,000 and has only grown 3.9 per cent annually over thepast five years, while in the last year alone the median Sydney house price rose 11.5 per cent.
These investors’ obsession with property is pathological (perhaps we could call it “Sydney syndrome”),with those captured by the property market spending all their time chattering about who bought what and for how much.
Our media is more than happy to feed this addiction,with recent (actual) headlines including:“Sydney home missing a large section of roof sells for almost $3 million” and“John was the only bidder for an auction. He still had no chance”.
We truly are the lucky country. By that,I mean that you need to be lucky and haverich parents to help you outbid the other property investors at auction.
“Only 13 per cent of homes for sale are affordable for a median income earner,meaning people on significantly above-median incomes are competing for what used to be low-end homes,” says Brooker.
How did we get to the point where kids are openly discussing how they are itching to go house-hunting as soon as theirparents drop dead,or whether auniversity education is worth the opportunity cost of getting on the property ladder? Affordable housing should be a right in a first-class society like Australia,but in 2024 we have tent cities appearing in Queensland.
Meanwhile,our politicians are caught between a politically influential investor class,maintaining a migration-based economy,and forever losing future generations of voters. They’re trying to fight the property dumpster fire with a hose connected to a petrol tanker,providing more grants,tax cuts and reducedlending requirements that only make the problem worse.
I don’t know about you,but it feels like something in the Australian property market has to give,and I don’t think it’s the bank of mum and dad.
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