The locations where buying a property is now ‘impossibly unaffordable'
Four Australian cities have been labelled 'impossibly unaffordable' to buy a home in a new study, as separate research shows more than 30 per cent of dwellings now cost $1 million or more.
The latest edition of the Demographia International Housing Affordability report compared the median house price to the median household income – a measure it called the median multiple – in 95 housing markets across eight countries.
It ranked Hong Kong as the most unaffordable housing market analysed, followed by Sydney in second place. Adelaide ranked sixth and Melbourne ranked ninth among the 'top 10 least affordable' markets.
The study by Chapman University in California rated markets on a scale ranging from 'affordable' (3.0 or less) to 'impossibly unaffordable' (9.0 or more). Across the 10 least affordable markets all were rated 'impossibly unaffordable' by the report.
Brisbane was also ranked 'impossibly unaffordable,' with a median multiple of 9.3, while Perth got a rating of 8.3.
'Sydney has had the first-, second- or third-least affordable housing of any major market in 16 of the last 17 years,' said the report, calling it 'remarkable' that Australian markets including Melbourne and Brisbane were 'less affordable than widely recognised world cities like New York, London, or Chicago.'
For the first time in its history, the Demographia report found none of the major housing markets it surveyed were 'affordable' (3.0 or below). According to the study, the primary causes of housing affordability were 'urban containment' measures such as growth boundaries, as well as restrictive land use policies.
It came as Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) released research that found more than a third of homes nationally were now valued at $1 million or higher. The portion of dwellings valued at $1 million or more rose from 9.7 per cent in April 2015, to 34.4 per cent as of April 2025, a series high.
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