Australia ranks among the wealthiest countries in the world, yet for a large and growing share of its population, buying a home has become genuinely out of reach. Young people, low-income renters and those in the big cities are bearing the brunt of a housing market that has moved much faster than wages. These five charts trace exactly how that happened, who is being hit hardest, and just how far things have shifted over the past two decades.

Chart 1: House Prices Have Left Wages Behind

Set-up: the widening gap since 2005

Source: ABS Residential Property Price Indexes (cat. 6416.0); ABS Wage Price Index (cat. 6345.0). Index base: 2005 = 100.

Chart 2: Renters in the Big Cities Are Under the Most Pressure

Supporting fact 1: rental stress by state and income group

Chart 3: Young Australians Are Being Shut Out of Homeownership

Supporting fact 2: ownership rates by age group across decades

Source: ABS Census of Population and Housing, 2001-2021 (cat. 2049.0).

Chart 4: The Heaviest Burden Falls on the Lowest-Income Renters

Main insight: housing stress by income quintile and tenure type

Chart 5: How Many Years of Income Does It Take to Buy a Home?

The call to action: affordability ratio by city, coloured by severity

Story Pitch

Housing affordability gets plenty of coverage in Australia, but most of that coverage stays at the surface. This story goes deeper by showing the specific groups being squeezed out and putting hard numbers to how far things have moved. Wages have barely kept up while house prices tripled over two decades. In New South Wales, a low-income renter is now spending more than half their income just to stay housed. Australians aged 25 to 34 are 14 percentage points less likely to own a home than the same age group was in 2001. And in Sydney, a household on the median income would need to save every single dollar they earn for 13 years to buy a median-priced home. The data comes from the ABS, AIHW and PropTrack. The story follows a clear narrative structure moving from context to evidence to the core finding, then closing with a city-by-city snapshot that gives readers something concrete to take away.

Acknowledgements

Claude (Anthropic, 2025), a generative AI assistant, was used during this assignment to check the structure and clarity of the narrative, review R code for errors, and give feedback on visual design choices. The story concept, data selection, final code, and all design decisions were made by the student.

Anthropic. (2025). Claude (claude-sonnet-4-6) [Large language model]. https://www.anthropic.com

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2024). Residential property price indexes: Eight capital cities (Cat. no. 6416.0). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/residential-property-price-indexes-eight-capital-cities

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2024). Wage price index, Australia (Cat. no. 6345.0). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/wage-price-index-australia

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Census of population and housing (Cat. no. 2049.0). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). Household income and wealth, Australia, 2019-20 (Cat. no. 6523.0). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/finance/household-income-and-wealth-australia/latest-release

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2024). Average weekly earnings, Australia (Cat. no. 6302.0). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/average-weekly-earnings-australia

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2024). Housing affordability. Australia’s welfare 2024. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/housing-affordability

PropTrack. (2025). Housing affordability report 2025. REA Group.