Higher Housing Costs

While the average annual adult wage has increased from $38,000 to $56,00 in last ten years the cost to service mortgage payments has gone up at a much faster pace.
In Victoria family needs to earn almost $110,000 a year in combined income to afford the mortgage payments on an average-priced Melbourne home worth $391,000.
In Sydney, where the median-priced home is $520,000, the houshold require a combined income of $145,000 to keep up with their mortgage payments.
In 1996, South Australian households only needed an income of about $30,000 to keep up with mortgage repayments on a median-priced $110,000 home.
But that figure more than doubled to $79,554 in 2006 for a median-priced home worth $285,100.