Where could you really afford to live? Sydney’s housing crisis mapped
If you bought a house in Lindfield two decades ago, you might now be able to afford Minchinbury. Find out how your family would be affected using our interactive.
By Nick Newling, Cindy Yin and Penry Buckley
Sisters Amy and Jordan Whalland, who are priced out of the rental market and live at home with their parents.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Twin sisters Amy and Jordan Whalland, 22, live in what they describe as a “house of five adults”. Priced out of a rental market that stops them living with friends closer to university, the pair live at home with their parents and their younger sister.
“I had an expectation of what being a uni student would feel like based on movies and books that I’ve read, [but] it feels like a continuation of high school because everyone stays at home,” Amy says.
If the twins’ parents were buying today, they would be living 40 kilometres west, and if the sisters were purchasing, they would be looking outside of Sydney.
In the early 2000s their parents, Craig and Alison, bought a fixer-upper in the north shore suburb of Lindfield. Surrounded by national parks and with schools, shops and transport links nearby, it was the perfect place to raise a young family. But now it would be inaccessible to them. They would be looking at suburbs like Glenfield, Riverstone and Minchinbury.
To demonstrate how increases in housing prices are shaping where Sydneysiders can afford to live, the Herald created the below interactive. If you enter the year you purchased your property, the price you paid and where it was located, the calculator will provide you with an inflation-adjusted budget, and a map of where you could afford to purchase a home today.
The Herald tested this interactive on the Whallands. The couple bought their Lindfield property below the median price. When asked where they expected to be able to purchase now, Alison thought Hornsby or Parramatta might be options.
The interactive shows they would need to look further afield. When applied to other examples across the past 35 years, the interactive shows similar results.
A house bought in Newtown in 1990 for $600,000 – slightly above the median price for that suburb and year – would cost the same as a property in Auburn, Lakemba or Greenacre, after adjusting for inflation, today. A purchaser buying a house in Hornsby in 2000 would now be looking in Woy Woy or Blacktown.
The same results were true of units. The average Surry Hills apartment in 2010 now costs the same as a flat in Rockdale, Campsie or Homebush.
Craig and Alison Whalland at home with their daughters Amy and Jordan.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
“I guess I’m not surprised, given everything I watch and read about house prices,” Alison says. “It doesn’t shock me because I can see that it’s bad. Houses clearly aren’t as affordable as they were.
“It does concern me in Sydney, for my girls in terms of what they do. I’m curious overall, how that changes us as a society.”
Craig has a positive view of living in the western suburbs, but he had caveats about commuting. He says: “If you were living 40 kilometres away from where we are now, and you had a job, and you had infrastructure, and you had a school, and that’s where it got you a three-, four-bedroom home on a quarter-acre block, I don’t think that’s that bad.
“[But] if you’re driving 40 kilometres every day to work and 40 kilometres home again, that, for me, is the killer.”
After many Baby Boomers bought their first homes, the median house price in Sydney doubled in the 10 years to 1994, and as Gen X joined them, prices crept up 160 per cent in the decade to December 2003, CoreLogic data shows.
Despite small dips during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, for Millennials and Gen Z now looking to buy, it’s as hard as it’s ever been. The median house price is $1.6 million in Sydney, about four times what it was in 1995 after adjusting for inflation. However, house prices have outpaced wages growth. In 1994, the average house cost about nine times the average income; now it’s more than 15 times.
For Amy Whalland, the struggle to afford to live in Sydney offers two realities for young people. Either accept defeat and spend money on enjoying life, or leave.
She says: “I really love Sydney. I think it’s a great city. It has many things to offer. But it doesn’t make sense to me to kill myself over getting a house where, if I could move and get something cheaper, why would I not do that instead?
“Our perspective is that we won’t be able to afford a house anyway, so we may as well go on a holiday or enjoy our time while we’re young and try to deal with it when we have a full-time job and more income.”
Jordan agrees, and says she is “very lucky” that her parents believed their children should live at home rent-free while studying, and that they were “extremely understanding” of the current housing market. But she says other people their parents’ age don’t seem to fully grasp how dire the situation is.
“We’re not idiots, and we mean what we say when there is a cost-of-living crisis. Believe us when we say we know how to spend our money, and that if it were just a case of ‘smashed avocado’, this still would be an issue,” she says.
“It takes some responsibility. If you’re in a higher position, and you’re from an older generation, look at what you paid, and actually think about if you were in our shoes, and you’re looking at the current house costs. What do you think you should be earning?”
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