Australian & New Zealand Homes Least Affordable in the World

This is something that is definitely news to me:

AUSTRALIAN and New Zealand homes are the least affordable in the world, according to a US-based survey of 227 cities.

The 2008 Demographia study of international housing affordability listed 18 Australian cities in its top 50 of severely unaffordable markets.

The study rates housing affordability in the English-speaking nations of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US, UK and Ireland.

The least affordable city in Australia is Mandurah (sixth-least affordable overall), south of Perth, where houses cost 9.5 times a household’s average annual income, with Sydney (8.6), Perth (7.6) and Melbourne (7.3) in 11th, 19th and 22nd place overall.

Demographia rates a city’s housing market "affordable" when the cost of an average home is three (or less) times average household income, "seriously unaffordable" for four times the average and "seriously unaffordable" for five times.

The Property Council of Australia said state governments needed to release more land, cut back on developer taxes and reduce red tape. [AAP]

I have been looking at property prices around the Melbourne suburbs and have found the houses here a little more expensive than in the United States, but I did not realize overall how much more expensive Australia is.