Sydney rates as the second-most expensive city for house prices globally, pipped only by Hong Kong for the second year running, according to researcher Demographia.
Five of the 29 cities rated in the group’s annual Housing Affordability Survey as “severely unaffordable” were in Australia.
The median price of a house in Sydney was 12.2 times the city’s annual median household income, while in Hong Kong it was 18.1 times. Vancouver was the third-most unaffordable city at 11.8 times and Auckland came in at number four.
Melbourne was also in the 10 most expensive cities for housing and was ranked as more expensive than Los Angeles and London, while 11 of the most affordable housing markets were in the US, according to Demographia, which looked at 406 cities of which 95 were major metropolitan centres with a population of more than 1 million.
The Demographia survey joins a number of housing affordability reports putting Sydney and Melbourne among the most expensive cities in the world.
Last year, investment bank UBS ranked Sydney No 4 in an index of cities facing the threat of a housing bubble.
The price of Sydney’s homes increased 69 per cent since the housing upturn began in mid-2012, while Melbourne’s prices rose 51 per cent over the same period, according to research firm CoreLogic who with Moody’s predict Australian capital city house prices will rise 6.6 per cent this year before price growth stalls in next year.
Housing affordability will become a far bigger political issue this year, according to Mark Steinert, chief executive of Australia’s biggest residential developer, Stockland.
However, the issue was largely confined to Sydney and Melbourne, Mr Steinert said.
This article was originally published by TURI CONDON on the 24 Jan 2017 via theaustralian.com.au