Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Income in which state? Where is the source? I just did some quick research that returned the average wage in 1971 as $3300 per year, and the median house price in Adelaide as $12,950, which is a factor of 4. Today the average wage is $70,000 and the median house price in Adelaide is $390,000, which is a factor of 5.5. I know that 390k wouldn't buy anything you want to live in in Adelaide, as well. You'd need at leas 450k for that, and then you'd be an hour out.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

There is no source other than personal experience.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Either the wage you're talking about was around half the average wage for 1971, or the house you're talking about was twice as expensive as the median, in that case.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

A tradesman's wage, carpenter, in 1971 was $45 per week, after tax, a teacher's salary, after tax, was $90 per fortnight. Don't care what your averages say that is fact. My house cost $17,500 and they only considered the husband's earnings for mortgage.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Ah, as I say, then your house was much more expensive than the median, and the wage was lower than the average. While this means the ratio was 7.5 for you, it was not for the average person. Interesting figures though.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

I live in reality not statistics, as do normal people, so just lets leave it there. Wages were as I stated as was the cost of housing for me and anyone I knew in that time. The interest rate was higher also.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

So there!

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Yes, but you live in your reality, which doesn't apply to me any more than any of the millions of people. It is for this reason that governments have statistics rather than popping around to Gibbo's house to gather data to inform other citizens. I'm quite happy to leave it here, as you suggest.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Where did you get that information from? In 1982 my income was 22k a year and I bought a house in Maryborough QLD for 19k. After a promotion we moved to the Northern outskirts of Brisbane in 1988 and on a salary of 30k bought a house in Morayfield for 43K. At that time houses in Redcliffe and Brisbane were around 80 - 140K so we did very well and eventually sold it for 80.

Then from 1990 to around 2004 the real estate market slowly declined and even in 2000 a friend bought the pictured house in Redcliffe (Clontarf) for 120k.

Similar properties in Sydney were about twice that of Brisbane or Redcliffe. The pictured house is not unlike my partner's niece's house in Beacon Hill Sydney so would have been worth around 240k at the time, now probably a mill.

The recent unaffordability boom has only been during the last 15 years.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

I, in no way mean to be nasty, when I say that you have no idea what reality was in '71. I am quite sure that those who lived here in '71 would verify what I have said despite any government statistics.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

gibbo, I note you are in the Hills District, the Sydney example I gave would be a few blocks back from Dee Why Beach.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Well you do live in Queensland!! I live in NSW and what I stated was what was exactly the circumstances at the time. I built my property in 1971 for $17,500. Today it is worth approximately $750k. What are you trying to say?

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

From historical data - the average weekly wage in 1971 in Australia was around $72 or $3700 per annum (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/wages)

Median house prices for 1971 ranged from around $12k in Adelaide to nearly $22k in Sydney (http://www.econ.mq.edu.au/Econ_docs/...elson_9_04.pdf - Table 1, page 8)

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

Gibbo would beg to differ. Apparently the statistics collected by government are wrong.

Re: Anyone quitting Aus due to the high cost of living
 

So your husband was earning around $70 a week ( you said $45 after tax). This is about $3600 per year. The house was $17,500, which is 4.8 times the salary. Today the house is worth 750k. The equivalent salary to your husband's, on these figures, would be $160,000 per year, yet the average carpenter wage in Australia is $75,000. It doesn't matter which way you cut it, houses are considerably less affordable now than they were in the 1970s.