Homely: 20 years of Australian Real Estate report released, higher cost-to-income ratio, explosive regional growth amongst key findings.

Homely: 20 years of Australian Real Estate report released, higher cost-to-income ratio, explosive regional growth amongst key findings.

Homely.com.au, the third largest online real estate marketplace in Australia, has partnered with the REIA on their latest Real Estate Market Facts report. 

The report covers the highlights of the last 20 years of Australian real estate, including median house sale price growth, rental prices, and lending trends across the country from June 2002 to June this year.

Key topics include the potential impact of a fixed-interest mortgage cliff priced in for 2023, and the cost-to-income ratio, which shows that housing affordability has significantly decreased in the face of lower wages over the past decade.

The report includes the median selling price growth of houses at 104%, while ‘other dwellings’, including units and apartments, have grown by 51%. Homely’s editorial team explains that if you bought a house in 2002 and held it until June this year, its value would have approximately doubled. Whereas, if you bought a unit or townhouse at the same time, you would have gained half of the original price by 2022. 

Impressive growth data in Hobart surprised experts, coming out on top of capital cities with a 269% median sale price increase on houses. 

One of the most interesting outtakes of the report is the growing unaffordability of homes. The increasing cost-to-income ratio evident over the last 20 years cannot be understated.

While Australia’s median house sale price grew 56% in the last 10 years, household income increased by just 10.2% in that time. In June 2002, a home cost the equivalent of 6 years of the average family income. By June this year, this equivalent had climbed to 8 years and 9 months – adding nearly three years. 

Economist and Co-Founder of BuyersBuyers, Pete Wargent says, “After twenty years of price increases, the deposit hurdle has increased very significantly for first homebuyers.”

Read the report on Homely.com.au and read what Pete and other experts have to say about the state of Australian real estate through the lens of the last two decades.