Property Prices 1

Recently I was quoted for 2thinknow in The Age on my benchmarking work on property prices.

The article was run in SMH and WA Today, as well as The Age. You can read the article here on SMH.

The interesting measure of property prices is multiple of income. There’s a lot of pain out there in inner-city and suburban Australia, and we’re all feeling it. The stats the government produces are aggregate stats, which averages out those doing uber-well (often blue collar semi-skilled trades, or specialist white collar) and those not doing so well (some white-collar or unskilled).

In a market economy the problem is central statistics rarely tell the whole story.

But anything above a multiple of 5 times the average wage (most like Demographia use 3 to 4 as unaffordable) is a seriously expensive property. Anyway, the danger is in ‘one size fits all’ national analysis.

You can reach me on @christopherhire on twitter.