New York Times article about our real estate boom
It makes you think when someone else writes about Australia and this article is a wake up call about just how unequal our society really is.
Higher property prices entrench the advantages of the wealthy. Australia has never been a more unequal society, social researchers say. Income of the top 5 percent of earners rose 78 percent from 1995 to 2012, while income of the bottom 20 percent rose 44 percent, according to a study last year by the Australian Council of Social Service, an advocacy group.
Among the 48 percent of Australians who don’t own homes, women over 50 years old are the most vulnerable. When the researchers Susan Thompson and Peter Phibbs interviewed renters for a study a few years ago, they found the cost of property was contributing to malnutrition.
Elderly women, who are more likely to rent because lower wages meant they couldn’t save as much as men throughout their lives, were paying their landlords first and utilities second and buying food last. “They were eating slices of white bread with all they could find on the last few days before pension day,” Mr. Phibbs said to me this month. “That’s depressing in a rich society.”
Read more at New York Times
Australian home prices have grown substantially faster than median household income. Affordability is falling when measured against how many years of income is needed to match the price of a home.
Five out of the 20 least affordable cities in the world are in Australia. The following table from CLSA doesn’t include what is now the most expensive city in China, Shenzhen, with a price-to-income ratio of 23.2 times.
Australia has 5 of the world's 20 least affordable cities in which to buy a home
... in the Australian Business Insider is more to the truth than than some US journalist trying to sell papers.
Australia is the best country to live in by far.
Interesting graph
Apartment prices are headed for a major shakeout that will almost certainly create contagion into the broader property market, says Stephen Walters, one of Australia’s most experienced economists.
Prices of apartments will fall 10 per cent to 15 per cent over the next one to two years, he predicts, squeezing buy-to-let investors who have borrowed to negative gear and are heavily relying on capital gains.
“I think it’s going to get ugly, particularly in some parts of the market and for some lower-income cohorts who have borrowed,” Mr Walters said in an interview on Tuesday.
“They were eating slices of white bread with all they could find on the last few days before pension day,”
Why would anybody buy white bread when for the same price there are better alternatives ???
Obviously written by a person who wants to sell a story whether true or not.