littda01

They were basically making the argument that coastal cities (hence no London) command a premium in housing costs. But they also rightly took flak for their argument here.

#1 - Australia largely only has coastal cities, so what is the alternative? Also, "country Aus" prices are also rising at the same rate anyway (see these blogs for the detail there).

#2 - why choose these cities? SF and NY are two of the most expensive markets in the US, and all have their own reasons for being so that may not apply in Aus. Why not include Miami, Portland, Seattle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool etc

The answer is because it wouldnt support their arguments.

Steve2009

You can't mix the sources of your data to suit your argument or people will quickly pull your analysis apart. Treating the Demographia data consistently it debunks all their arguments. For what it's worth I personally think both Demographia and the ABS have serious flaws in their data as does RP Data.

ABCDiamond

I agree with that. I am not sure that Demographia calculates incomes the same for each country in the first place. Whether the USB Australian income data = Demographia US income ? Who knows ?

The only real figures that can be somewhat trusted are continuing numbers from one source. eg: something like this for housing in Sydney, which should be looked at for the trend data rather than actual figures. (The figures mean nothing in themselves, unless you want to be THE median priced house in Sydney)

$497,000 Jun-2006
$483,000 Sep-2006
$500,000 Dec-2006
$482,000 Mar-2007
$513,400 Jun-2007
$515,000 Sep-2007
$541,000 Dec-2007
$499,000 Mar-2008
$517,500 Jun-2008
$482,000 Sep-2008
$467,800 Dec-2008
$448,000 Mar-2009
$490,000 Jun-2009

However, even these don't take account of periods when more of the cheaper, or more expensive, houses are purchased, consequently varying the median.

ABCDiamond

So, choosing Bristol rather than London supports the argument better, showing that Sydney is more expensive than Bristol. I thought that would be obvious.

Not that this has much to do with the fall in Migrants of 11.7%, which no one is really interested in, as it isn't a very high number after all

littda01

London is not a coastal city. Bristol is (sort of). Don't ask me to defend their rationale

On the medians debate, here is the explanation of Demographia's approach -

"The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey uses the
“Median Multiple” (median house price divided by gross annual
median household income) to assess housing affordability. The
Median Multiple is widely used for evaluating urban markets, for
example being recommended by the World Bank and the
United Nations."