Brisbane has officially joined the ranks of cities where buying a house feels like winning the lottery, according to the latest Demographia International Housing Affordability report.
For those of us actually living here, this report just confirms what we already know: buying a house in Brisbane is tough. Auctions are a blood sport, prices are insane, and first-home buyers are basically locked out. And it’s not just buying; renting is getting crazy too. Vacancy rates are super low, and rents are skyrocketing.
The annual Demographia report looks at housing markets across major cities in places like Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Canada. They use a simple measure: how many years of your salary it would take to buy a median-priced house. If it’s more than five years, things are officially “severely unaffordable.” And guess what? Brisbane is way up there, ranked as the 11th most unaffordable city in the world this year.
To put it in perspective, Brisbane is just behind cities like Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver, San Jose, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Melbourne and San Francisco.
The report says that the median house price in Brisbane is now more than nine times the median household income. Let that sink in. That means if you earn the average salary, you’d need to save every single penny for over nine years to buy an average house.
What’s driving this madness? A bunch of things, apparently. Brisbane’s population is booming, but we’re not building enough houses to keep up. Plus, everyone from down south seems to be moving here, driving up demand even further. Remember when COVID hit and everyone thought prices would drop? Yeah, that didn’t last long. Now, with remote work becoming the norm, even more people are eyeing off the Queensland lifestyle.
Housing experts are yelling at the government to do something, like release more land, change planning rules, and build more affordable housing. Otherwise, Brisbane could end up like Sydney or Vancouver, where only the super-rich can afford to own a home.
This report is a wake-up call. If Brisbane wants to stay a liveable city for everyone, we need to tackle this housing crisis head-on. Otherwise, owning a home here will remain a pipe dream for most of us.
If you want to dive into the numbers, you can check out the full Demographia International Housing Affordability report on their official website.
