There are still opportunities to buy affordable houses in Australia’s capital cities despite recent price growth.

Analysis from CoreLogic shows that 28.2% of Melbourne’s housing markets can still be considered affordable. It considers a suburb affordable if the median house price does not exceed $900,000 in Sydney and Melbourne and $600,000 in the other capital cities. In Adelaide, 10.2% of housing markets meet that criteria, in Perth, 9.4% were affordable and in Brisbane 8.8% were. The proportion of Sydney homes in the affordable category is 5.5%.

Nationally, the portion of affordable house markets has fallen to 46%, down from 50.2% a year ago.
CoreLogic Research director Tim Lawless says the pool of affordable suburbs will continue to shrink as prices continue to rise in the coming months. “I think we’ll see a further erosion of affordability, and for those people looking to get into the marketplace, that probably means it’s going to become harder,” he says.