‘The good old days’: Sydney catalogue from 2006 shows affordable housing
A shocking video compares the price of buying a home in 2006 to now. And it is leaving young Australians laughing, crying or both.
Australia’s worsening housing crisis is leaving an increasing number of young people to wonder if they will ever achieve the dream of owning their own home.
Many are comparing their current situation to the past, trying to understand why it seems to have been so much cheaper for their parents to buy their first home two decades ago.
In 2006, you could buy a three-bedroom house in Liverpool, southwest of Sydney, for just $369,950, only $20,000 more than an apartment in the same area, according to a Sydney West Real Estate catalogue featured in a now viral TikTok.
“Just casually, a four-bedroom house for 400k in Casula that would be about over a million now,” TikTok creator Tess Nguyen said.
“Then we have a cheap $255,000 dollar house in Sadleir.”
“Want a few acres (in Leppington)? It is only 1.3 million with seven acres.”
The two-part TikTok series created by Midnight Mischief Sleepwear director Tess Nguyen, 28, puts the shockingly low home prices in 2006 on full display.
“My Mum is a massive hoarder and I just stumbled across the catalogue one day,” Ms Nguyen said.
“I showed it to my family and they were shocked, but they were laughing too and saying, ‘I wish these real estate agents were still selling these houses for these prices now’.”
“My boyfriend was joking saying, ‘why weren’t we buying houses when we were 10 years old’.”
Ms Nguyen said most of the reactions to her videos have mirrored that of her family’s, saying most people seem “shocked” but they also “had a laugh”.
“I wish I had a time machine, take me back to 2006 to the good old days,” she said.
Ms Nguyen said she will likely make a part three, saying there is “plenty more content” in the catalogue.
PropTrack senior economist Paul Ryan said in Sydney today the estimated value for a house is $1.3 million and for a unit it is $800,000.
Mr Ryan said the growing divide between the price point of houses and units is partly due to the “pandemic boom.”
“The preference since the pandemic is that people want more space,” he said.
“They want a backyard, they want a home office because people are working either from home or hybrid.”
Mr Ryan said in addition to this people who owned houses over the period since 2006 have “done better” in terms of capital appreciation than those who owned units, making owning a home more desirable.
“People have fundamentally changed how they use their homes and live in their homes, so some of that is going to be reflected in higher valuations for houses going forward,” he said.
The Housing Affordability Index in 2006 showed that a median income household in NSW could afford 14 per cent of home sales, while today in 2024 that same group can afford only half of home sales at 7 per cent, he said.
There are many factors that contribute to this decline in housing affordability, with stagnating income growth along with interest rates being a couple of the main factors, he said.
“Housing affordability across NSW is definitely at a lower level than it was in 2006, quite markedly so,” Mr Ryan said.
“I think interest rates returning back to similar 2006 higher price levels and with income growth that hasn’t kept up with that, those two things are the drivers of worsening affordability conditions across Sydney.”