Karratha and Kalgoorlie - Demographia's most affordable towns

Karratha and Kalgoorlie - Demographia's most affordable towns
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 7, 2020

The recent surging house prices in Sydney and Melbourne kept Australia near the very top of Demographia's annual list of the world's least affordable countries.

The typical Australian house costs 5.6 times the median household income, with only Hong Kong (19) ranked less affordable; with New Zealand (5.2) and the UK (5.1) not too far behind.

Sydney sits as the second least affordable city in the world, with house prices calculated by the property think tank as 12.2 times incomes.

Melbourne came in equal fourth, along with Auckland and San Jose, at 9.7, narrowing pipping San Francisco (9.4) and London (8.5).

Demographia only looks at house prices rather than units which constitutes around 35% of Australian dwellings.

Outside the big cities, Tweed Heads was the most costly place to live with a ratio of 9.3.

Bowral-Mittagong, the Sunshine Coast, Port Macquarie, the Gold Coast and Wollongong all had price-to-income ratios of 8 or more.

The two most affordable towns in Australia were both Western Australian mining centres, where those who still have mining industry employment earn high wages, while house prices have slumped.

Karratha had a ratio of 2.5 and Kalgoorlie at 2.9.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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