this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Im Australian as well and did a bit of number crunching the other day. I live in suburban sprawl 40 minutes from the middle of Brisbane and 40 minutes from the middle of the gold coast. Much worse if there's traffic. No particular natural beauty to speak of. It's an upper blue collar suburb, lots of qualified tradies, wives have a part time gig while the kids are at school.
The median house price is 750k. There is very little variance. All houses are pretty much the same. Right now the cheapest is $650k with 10 houses under 750k (maybe 100 houses on the market right now)
There are 3141 households in the suburb The weekly repayments on 750k is just over $1000/week on a 30 year loan
Of those households, only 2200 households earn enough money to pay the mortgage. That's not earn enough and live, literally earn enough just to pay it and then you cant eat, no electricity, rates etc.
https://profile.id.com.au/gold-coast/household-income?WebID=410
So that leaves 70% who can even just exist.
Affordable housing is considered as being 30% of your income, (https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/understanding-3040-indicator-housing-affordability-stress) that's supposed to cover rates and maintenance too, but let's just see who can afford to pay the mortgage:
270 homes. That's only 8.5%. 8.5% of homes in my suburb can afford to pay the MEDIAN mortgage and live without housing stress.
In that link above it considers that the bottom 40% of houses should not be paying more than 30% of their income. This suburb is great for that because I would suggest it's pretty low-average as far as income goes. It's the definition of what should be affordable housing.
That means we need to see the median house fall to 30% of the $1250-$1499 income bracket. IE repayments at $450/week - or a median house price of $315,000
Basically prices need to halve, or incomes need to double.
It doesn't make any sense how the economy hasn't collapsed yet. I would love someone to explain to me how it all adds up, because when I try to discuss it people just shrug and say "They are worth that much and it's not coming down" like how is anyone affording it?
Yeah thanks for taking the time to post this. So Americans and others can get an idea of just how bad it can get.
I know why it hasn't collapsed yet, it's because folks like me are hanging on. My wife and I moved to a rural location that will never be expensive to rent in. And vetted landlords as best we could.
So many folks are trying to adapt and kicking the can. But there's only so much we can stretch. People are already moving back in with their parents, building granny flats out back and so on.
I was making 90k, but with no generational wealth to back me, I was making just enough to pay rent in a major city, pay my bills and feed myself. Working 13hr days for the priveledge.
Changing careers and joining a union right now.