Housing Affordability — Sydney — 145 Years

A Sydney house now costs
21 years of wages

From federation to the 1980s, a median Sydney house cost 4–8× average annual earnings. That ratio held through two world wars, a depression, and a dozen recessions. Then rates fell for 40 years, and the multiple tripled. Today it sits at an estimated 21× — a level with no historical precedent.

Stapledon / UNSW — median price ÷ avg wage, 1880–2005

WSP / ABS / CoreLogic — median price ÷ avg earnings, 1950–2024

Estimated — applied CoreLogic & ABS growth rates to 2025

Data

Year	Stapledon (UNSW)	WSP	Estimated
1880	8.9×
1885	8.2×
1890	9.5×
1895	7.6×
1900	6.5×
1905	7.4×
1910	6.5×
1915	7.3×
1920	7.1×
1925	5.6×
1930	4.6×
1935	5.4×
1940	5.0×
1945	4.5×
1950	7.5×	6.3×
1955	4.2×
1960	5.1×	4.5×
1965	5.6×
1970	5.6×	5.0×
1975	5.3×
1980	6.4×	6.3×
1985	5.2×
1990	7.8×	7.5×
1995	7.4×	6.4×
2000	8.9×	8.1×
2005	11.1×	10.3×
2010		11.0×
2015		14.4×
2020		15.1×
2024		20.4×	20.4×
2025			21.0×

Sources & Working Materials

Stapledon — UNSW

Nigel Stapledon, “Long-term Housing Prices in Australia.” Ratio of median Sydney house price to average annual wage, 1880–2005.
Paper (Yumpu) · Wage data — Hutchinson & Ploeckl, MeasuringWorth

WSP — Wealth & Security Planners

“Australian Housing Affordability.” Median house price as a multiple of annual earnings, using ABS, RBA & CoreLogic data, 1950–2024.
wsp.com.au/…/australian_housing_affordability

Estimated — 2025 extension

WSP’s last data point is 2024 (20.4×). To extend to 2025 we applied reported growth rates: Sydney house prices +6.5% (CoreLogic / PropTrack), wages +3.4% (ABS Wage Price Index, Dec 2025) → 21.0×.
Sydney Housing Market Outlook 2026 · ABS Wage Price Index, Dec 2025

Working Materials

All data points verified by a human editor against primary sources.
Google Sheets — full calculations & cross-checks · Stone Transparency — video bibliography

A Sydney house now costs21 years of wages

A Sydney house now costs
21 years of wages