2021 Demographia International survey ranks Australia among the most expensive housing markets
The 2021 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey ranks Australia as having two of the most expensive housing markets in the world.
This year’s report assesses 92 major metropolitan markets in eight nations in the third quarter of 2020 with 36 severely unaffordable major housing markets.
The 10 least affordable were ranked as Hong Kong, Vancouver, Sydney, Auckland, Toronto, Melbourne, San Jose, San Francisco, Honolulu and London.
It is presented by the Urban Reform Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy who work on a price to income ratio.
"It is not surprising that housing affordability — given the large influx of new buyers, particularly in suburban and outlying areas — has continued to deteriorate," institute president Charles Blain advised.
"As a result many low-income and middle-income households who already have suffered the worst consequences from housing inflation will see their standards of living further decline."
The report noted virtually all of the markets with severely unaffordable housing have urban containment policies that severely restrict building on their periphery.
It noted by 2004, all of the major markets of Australia had become severely unaffordable. "National price-to-income ratios were 3.0 or less in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States until the late 1980s or 1990s.
"However since that time, housing affordability has deteriorated significantly and by 2019 national median multiples had increased to 4.0 in the United States and Canada, nearly 6.0 in Australia and 7.0 in New Zealand," it noted.
