Australia’s housing affordability crisis now so bad that miners are the only group able to buy typical house

Australia’s housing affordability crisis is now so bad that fly-in fly-out miners are the only labour force category where the average worker can afford the typical $1 million home with a backyard.

Sure, there are surgeons and cabinet ministers earning more than $400,000 a year, and CEOs on multi-million dollar salaries but their elite numbers are way too small to meaningfully affect a broad, industry grouping.

When it comes to a sizeable category, mining workers, on an average salary of $165,069 as of November, are the only group able to afford the middle-priced $993,817 Australian house with a 20 per cent mortgage deposit, on their own.

And that’s after years of saving up if someone isn’t a first-home buyer who’s eligible to enter the market under the Federal Government’s 5 per cent deposit scheme.

Life is particularly tough for those without access to the Bank of Mum and Dad

Even real estate agents are worried with Doug Driscoll, the chief executive of Starr Partners, acknowledging the affordability crisis is getting worse and can’t be ignored.

“It is getting further and further out of reach for first-home buyers. I do not buy this ‘they shouldn’t be eating avocado on toast for breakfast’,” he told The Nightly.

“It is getting progressively worse and if you continue on this vein, then what’s it going to look like in five years’ time, 10 years’ time?

“To do nothing, take a laisse-faire approach, I think is a dereliction of duty to every government.”

None of Australia’s 16 other industry sectors offer average, career salaries that would even remotely buy a median-priced house in Australia’s largest State capital cities.

This is where seven-figure prices are now typical, including in previously affordable Perth with Melbourne and Adelaide not far off.

That’s based on banks conservatively lending someone five times their pre-tax salary at the existing 3.85 per cent Reserve Bank cash rate.

The average, full-time salary of $106,657 would only buy a $667,000 apartment in Melbourne or Adelaide or a house in a far, outer suburb a long commute from the city.

A teacher earning $111,977 would struggle to buy the median-priced regional house worth $759,883, based on Cotality data, but could snap up something a little rundown to get into the market.

That’s if an investor hasn’t swooped in first near Maitland, west of Newcastle, where house prices in more affordable suburbs, near the Hunter River and the M1 motorway, have surged by 13 per cent during the past year or almost four times the pace of wages.

A better-paid professional in the IT, media and telecommunications sector, on $139,625, would be able buy an outer suburban $873,000 house in most capital cities but not in Sydney.

Life is particularly tough for those without access to the Bank of Mum and Dad, or who are single.

It wasn’t always this way, despite baby boomers often reminding younger generations of those 18 per cent interest rates they paid in 1989.

Three decades ago, the average, full-time salary bought a median-priced house in Sydney - Australia’s most expensive market.

With a 20 per cent mortgage deposit, someone earning $33,701 in February 1996 could buy a $211,125 home and owe their bank five times their salary.

That would today be within the acceptable debt-to-income threshold of six, which beyond that, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority regards as risky.

In 2026, Sydney’s median house price of $1.6 million is a whopping 16 times the average, full-time salary, and that’s to get something in traditionally working class Bankstown.

Even with a hefty mortgage deposit of $319,764 - after years of living at home with the parents - this meticulous saver wanting to buy on their own would still owe the bank 12 times their pay and would fail to get a loan.

Only a working couple, each earning above-average six figure salaries, would stand a chance, at a pinch.

House prices in both regional areas and capital cities soared by double-digit figures in the year to January, following three Reserve Bank rate cuts.

Broad-based increases of 10.2 per cent across Australia were triple the 3.4 per cent wage price index.

Not even the most militant trade union would be able to secure pay rises that could keep pace with house values.

Young couples are unable to afford a house with a backyard in a city where their careers are, so they can raise their kids with a cubby house and be home from work at a reasonable time.

It’s little wonder Australia’s fertility rate is at a record low of 1.5 for every woman.

The surge in house prices accelerated after the 1999 debut of the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount that’s now under review under orders from Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

That also coincided with immigration levels doubling during the 2000s iron ore mining boom, when high salaries offered in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region caused a labour shortage.

If this housing affordability crisis continues, coal miners won’t be the only ones working underground - political revolutionaries will too.