The Australian Generational Housing Gap

Home ownership has long been central to the Australian dream. But since the mid-1980s, median house prices across Australia's capital cities have risen more than four times faster than wages, compounding with each property cycle to place that dream further out of reach.

Using four decades of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Reserve Bank of Australia, this tool lets you put a number on the gap: compare what it actually cost to buy a home in any year from 1985 to 2024 against what it costs today.

How it works

Step 1

Enter your annual income, or choose to use national average earnings instead.

Step 2

Select a city and drag the slider to choose a year from the past to compare against.

Step 3

See how housing affordability has changed between that year and today.

Your income basis

Annual income (AUD)

City

Compare against

1990

19852024

Then

Median house price

Annual income used

Price-to-income ratio

times annual income

Years to save deposit

saving 15% of income p.a.

Monthly mortgage repayment

Now

2025

Median house price

Annual income used

Price-to-income ratio

times annual income

Years to save deposit

saving 15% of income p.a.

Monthly mortgage repayment

Data sources

House prices 1985–2001: Abelson & Chung (2006), "The Real Story of Housing Prices in Australia from 1970 to 2003." House prices 2002–2025: ABS Cat. 6432.0, Residential Property Price Indexes, median established house prices, quarterly. Earnings 1985–1993: RBA Statistical Table 4.18 (ABS Cat. 6304.0), full-time adult total earnings. Earnings 1994–2025: ABS Cat. 6302.0, Average Weekly Earnings, biannual, full-time adult total earnings. Mortgage rates: RBA Statistical Table F5, standard variable owner-occupier rate (FILRHLBVS), annual average of monthly readings. CPI: RBA Statistical Table G1, Consumer Price Index all groups, quarterly (September 2025 = 100).

This tool is free and independent. If you found it useful, a small contribution helps keep it going.

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About

What this is and why it was built.

The Australian Generational Housing Gap is a personal project built to put concrete numbers on something many Australians feel but rarely see quantified: the structural shift in housing affordability between generations. Between 1985 and 2025, median house prices across Australian capital cities rose by more than 1,500 per cent in nominal terms. Average full-time earnings rose by around 400 per cent over the same period. The gap between those two trajectories is the premise of this tool.

The calculator lets you compare three key affordability metrics: the price-to-income ratio, years required to save a 20 per cent deposit, and the share of income consumed by mortgage repayments, at any two points in time between 1985 and 2025. You can use your own income or national average earnings as the basis. A CPI adjustment shows what your current salary would have been worth in the past in real terms, allowing a genuine like-for-like comparison.

All underlying data is sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Reserve Bank of Australia. House price data from 1985 to 2001 is drawn from Abelson and Chung (2006), a peer-reviewed reconstruction of Australian residential prices predating the ABS series. From 2002, it uses ABS Catalogue 6432.0. Earnings data uses ABS Catalogue 6302.0 from 1994, extended back to 1985 using RBA Table 4.18. Mortgage rates are from RBA Table F5.

This tool does not argue for a particular policy position. It makes the numbers available. What you do with them is up to you.