Canberra makes the unaffordable top 50!

good to see we all go crazy over this “limited” study. Good to see we don’t compare ourselves against, the rest of the world outside, North America, NZ and the UK. (oh and throw in Hong Kong to try and make it look more global).

To be fair to poor old Stanhope (goes slightly against the grain, but I’m in a good mood today) Canberra only came in around or a little below the middle for Australia. Hell, beautiful downtown Bendigo is worse!
What this survey DOES show is how grossly over-inflated the entire housing market is in Australia.
I think Canberra is merely a part of the phenomonon rather than being especially awful in comparison with other Australian cities.

jasmine said :

Wagga Wagga more expensive than Canberra? Really! A quick tour on realestate.com.au reveals that Wagga is much cheaper than Canberra. So is Bendigo but you don’t need a website to know that.

Australia does rank high on the unaffordable housing stakes for sure but these figures seem a bit shaky.

Ah, nope. We are looking at median house prices relative to gross annual household incomes.

So if you look to page 32 of the survey Canberra’s median house price ($558k) is only topped by Sydney ($634k) and Melbourne ($565k).

But our gross annual median household income is just over $100,000 – the highest for the country. Whereas other cities like Sydney with $66,200 and Melbourne with $63,100 means that in terms of affordability (and our subsequent right to bitch and moan about house prices) we sit waaay down the list.

You are right Jasmine, Wagga’s median house price is a lowly $310,100 but their household income, at $53,800, is almost half ours.

Wagga Wagga more expensive than Canberra? Really! A quick tour on realestate.com.au reveals that Wagga is much cheaper than Canberra. So is Bendigo but you don’t need a website to know that.

Australia does rank high on the unaffordable housing stakes for sure but these figures seem a bit shaky.

rosscoact said :

I agree, the actual story is that Canberra is equal 21st least affordable city but if you say it like that in the slightly hysterical shreiking tone employed by some sections of the old and new media, it just don’t work

Do you mean to say statistics don’t tell the full story? I’m shocked, just shocked.

I suspect we’ll drift down the list over the next few years. There’ll be neither a crash nor a boom in the short term.

Now wait- on the weekend there was a newspiece on the ABC that showed that Canberrans rate their city so much that Canberra is the second most livable capital city in Australia (behind Adelaide).

Doesn’t that show we’re proud?

Holden Caulfield said :

It would be Canberra’s higher than normal average wage that pushes us a bit further down the list I suspect. Which, when gauging affordability for a city’s residents, is fair enough, I guess!

That’s exactly the thing, it is not that housing in Canberra is appreciably cheaper than in Melbourne or Sydney, just that Canberra residents have comparatively higher incomes than Melbourne/Sydney.

Given the number of Australian cities in the top 50, I’d say that we’re not actually doing too badly.

That’s if these stats actually meant anything, which they don’t.

See, the odd thing about this, and based on a few minutes checking out Melbourne real estate agent websites, is it costs about the same to buy an entry level apartment in the city in Canberra, as it does in Melbourne.

In fact, I saw one rather nicely renovated freestanding townhouse in North Melbourne, with city views, that was priced at about $750K from memory. Good luck finding a similarly specced and priced property within walking distance of the city in our fair town.

It would be Canberra’s higher than normal average wage that pushes us a bit further down the list I suspect. Which, when gauging affordability for a city’s residents, is fair enough, I guess!