Sydney's housing market is the second most unaffordable in the world (2024)

As if Sydney’s housing crisis wasn’t disheartening enough, a new global study has revealed the most unaffordable cities to buy a house – and we're saddened (but somewhat unsurprised) to reveal that Sydney has landed at second on the list. Yep, in this era of cozzie livs, this is hardly a title we ever wanted or needed.

For the past 20 years, the Demographia International Housing Affordability Report has analysed middle-income housing affordability across 94 major markets in eight countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, theUK and the US. The report ranks each city based on its median multiple score, calculated by dividing the average house price in a city by its gross median household income. A score of 5.1 or more is considered ‘severely unaffordable’, and this year, a new category, ‘impossibly unaffordable’, was introduced for those scoring nine or above.

The semi-good news is that nearly 90 per cent of cities in the world did not fall in the ‘impossibly unaffordable’ category. However, the bad news is more than a quarter of those cities deemed as ‘impossibly unaffordable’ are in Australia.

And although our friends down in Melbourne and Adelaide are also subjected to some horribly high home prices, our very own Harbour City ranked as the second least affordable major property market in the world, with a staggering median multiple score of 13.8. This also marks the 15th time in the last 16 years that Sydney has claimed a spot in the top three.

Australia’s second largest capital city (Melbourne) has a median multiple score of 9.8 – ranking as the seventh-least affordable market in the world, compared with its ranking as ninth least affordable in the 2023 ratings. Adelaide wasn’t far behind, landing in ninth place with a median multiple of 9.7 (a significant jump from 14th place in 2023), with Brisbane and Perth ranking 13th and 16th respectively.

The report highlighted that skyrocketing housing prices, which outpace income growth, are the main cause of this nationwide housing crisis. This issue is only escalated by limited land availability and surging demand.

So what was the most affordable housing market out of all 94 cities? That title goes to Pittsburgh.

Here are the ten least affordable major housing markets in the world:

1. Hong Kong, China
2. Sydney, Australia
3. Vancouver, Canada
4. San Jose, US
5. Los Angeles, US
6. Honolulu, US
7. Melbourne, Australia
8. San Francisco, US
9. Adelaide, Australia
10. San Diego, US

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