They’d begun with a study looking at whether buying a home in the most affordable areas Sydney might be achievable for someone on a part-time wage. But then they discovered that it wasn’t possible even for a person on a median full-time salary and that it probably wouldn’t be until at least 2031.
They then came up with the result that absolutely nowhere in Greater Sydney was affordable. Some units in the cheapest suburbs of western Sydney were just a little above the threshold, but there were none within. And houses were nowhere near. “You need some very heroic and optimistic modelling to come up with a result that’s different to the trends we’ve seen in the last years of housing unaffordability,” Gurran said. “The first question is, will we see that number of new homes built?
Even worse, with the proportion of part-time workers increasing from 20.6 per cent in to 23.6 per cent over the year to May 2021, on a median wage of $600, that sector of the population is even less likely to be able to enter the housing market.