From a mean dwelling price now exceeding $1 million to 289,000 people turning to homelessness services in 2024–25, five charts reveal how Australia’s housing system reached its most unaffordable point on record.
Australia’s housing affordability hit a fresh record low in 2025. The national mean dwelling price crossed $1.07 million in December 2025, which is up $280,000 since March 2020 alone. The price-to-income ratio reached 8.2, well above the 20-year average of 6.8. Saving a 20% deposit now takes 11 years for a median-income household. This is not a Sydney story. It is an every-city, every-state story of a system under acute and worsening strain.
The structural problem: dwelling values have outpaced incomes by 3x in two decades.
What this shows: Since 2004, dwelling values have risen ~215% while incomes grew ~100%. The GFC briefly narrowed the gap before price growth resumed. The post-COVID surge (2020-2022) was the most extreme acceleration on record. By September 2025, the price-to-income ratio reached 8.2 — a series high, well above the 20-year average of 6.8 (Cotality/ANU, 2025). Australia now has the third-least affordable housing among OECD nations.
Every city got worse — some dramatically so.
What this shows: Sydney now requires 16.7 years for a median-income household to save a house deposit — up from 13.2 in 2020. Brisbane (+4.4 yrs) and Adelaide (+5.3 yrs) saw the steepest deterioration of any major city. Six of eight capital cities now sit above the 10-year threshold. Only Darwin improved slightly and Canberra moderated from its 2020 peak, reflecting dwelling value corrections in those markets.
Four variables mapped at once: rental stress rate, CRA recipient count, median weekly rent, and geography.
What this shows: Using only directly published AIHW data, this chart reveals that 42% of Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) recipients nationally remain in rental stress even after receiving the subsidy (June 2024). The ACT (48%) and Tasmania (46%) have the highest rates. NSW carries the greatest volume with 372,000 CRA recipients. The persistence of rental stress despite CRA shows the subsidy has not kept pace with market rents – which rose 5.5% in the year to March 2025 (ABS, 2025).
The intergenerational divide: young Australians own at rates lower than any cohort in 40 years.
What this shows: In 1981, 61.5% of 25-34 year olds owned their home. By 2021 that had fallen to 40.4% — and the trend shows no sign of reversing. The 65+ cohort has barely moved throughout. The PropTrack Housing Affordability Report (November 2025) finds that even now, a median-income household can afford just 15% of homes for sale — and only half of current renters expect to ever own their home (AHURI, 2024).
Homelessness services assisted a record 289,000 people in 2024-25 — and still turned away 1 in 3.
What this shows: Nearly 289,000 Australians accessed specialist homelessness services in 2024–25 — the system’s highest sustained level since the post-COVID period. Family and domestic violence remains the largest client group (40%), but the fastest-growing category is housing affordability stress: 26,200 clients in 2024–25, up from 12,500 a decade ago. Critically, 1 in 3 requests for emergency accommodation went unmet — the system is not just strained, it is rationing.
The 2025 data paints an unambiguous picture. Australia’s housing system has drifted beyond the reach of ordinary income earners. The mean dwelling price crossing $1 million, the price-to-income ratio hitting a fresh record, and deposit timelines extending past a decade are not the outcomes of a single policy failure. They are the accumulated result of undersupply, tax incentives that favour investors over first-home buyers, and wages that have simply not kept pace with asset price inflation.
The urgency is growing. Only half of current renters expect to ever own a home. Nearly 290,000 people needed homelessness services last year — and thousands were turned away. Whatever policy response comes next, the data is clear that incremental measures will not be sufficient. The gap between housing costs and household incomes is now at a record high, and closing it will require structural, not cosmetic, reform.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2026, March 10). Total value of dwellings: December quarter 2025 [Media release]. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/total-value-dwellings-reaches-12-trillion
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2023). Estimating homelessness: Census, 2021 (Cat. no. 2049.0). ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/estimating-homelessness-census/latest-release
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Survey of income and housing (Cat. no. 6523.0). ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/income-and-wealth/survey-income-and-housing
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Consumer price index, Australia (Cat. no. 6401.0). ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/consumer-price-index-australia
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. (2024). Planning for a two-tenure future (Final Report No. 431). AHURI. https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/431
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2025). Housing affordability. AIHW, Australian Government. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/housing-affordability
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2025). Housing assistance in Australia. AIHW, Australian Government. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/housing-assistance/housing-assistance-in-australia
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2025). Commonwealth Rent Assistance in Australia: Quarterly data report. AIHW, Australian Government. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/housing-assistance/cwlth-rent-assistance-in-australia-quarterly-data
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2025). Specialist homelessness services annual report 2024-25. AIHW, Australian Government. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/homelessness-services/specialist-homelessness-services-annual-report
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2025). Home ownership and housing tenure. AIHW, Australian Government. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/home-ownership-and-housing-tenure
Cotality. (2025, November). Housing affordability report: Australia, November 2025. Cotality. https://discover.cotality.com/hubfs/Article-Reports/2511-Cotality-Housing-Affordability-Report-November-FINAL.pdf
National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. (2025). State of the housing system 2025. NHSAC, Australian Government. https://nhsac.gov.au/sites/nhsac.gov.au/files/2025-05/ar-state-housing-system-2025.pdf
Okabe, M., & Ito, K. (2008). Color universal design (CUD): How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to colorblind people. JCBi. https://jfly.uni-koeln.de/color/
PropTrack. (2025, November). Housing affordability report 2025. REA Group. https://www.proptrack.com.au/insights/housing-affordability-report/
SGS Economics & Planning, National Shelter, & Housing All Australians. (2025). Rental affordability index 2025. SGS Economics & Planning. https://sgsep.com.au/publications/insights/rental-affordability-index-2025
Wickham, H. (2010). A layered grammar of graphics. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 19(1), 3-28. https://doi.org/10.1198/jcgs.2009.07098