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Comment by PebblesHD | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if Australia's current housing situation is analogous to America's one, but one of the primary motivators on our side of the pond is financial. Rents within 60km/35mi of the main Sydney CBD have crossed well over 50% of the average persons wage, at around $700/week. I currently live 45km from Sydney and pay $800/wk for a detached house primarily because I don't want to live in a 1 bedroom box in the city. Unfortunately, for that $800, I get next to no public transport and a local government that doesn't actually do anything useful. If I had the option I would gladly have stayed at home for a few years to start saving for a deposit on a house, which is no easy feat since the national average price is creeping closer to the $1m mark, and the average around major cities is already well over that mark.

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My former boss told me three or four years ago that rent and electrical bills will make 75% of your income. Like back in the industrial Revolution.

Sadly I think he is right.

Between rent, bills, transport, and food I'm hovering around 75-80% - id say your former boss was rather on the money there...

You still have money for food and transport.

Just your rent and electric bill will be 75%

Wow is rental really that bad nowadays? I left OZ around 2001, and at the time lived in the hills district, and vaguely remember paying AU$200+/week for a 2 br townhouse. It was an hour+ drive to the CBD, but thankfully my employer was also in the hills district, so I rarely had to make that drive.

It's certainly got a bit out of control. I live further out in Rouse Hill, and my 4 bed with garage house is $800/wk not including utilities. Townhouses are more reasonable, but compared to a house still insane. 2 bed apartment thing in a new complex down the road starts at $650/wk.

I don't understand how politicians don't consider that a crisis. Too many fat happy landlords I suppose.

It disproportionately affects young people, and they don't really care about young people. So I'm not surprised.

It's more that it only affects poor people, regardless of age, and they really don't care about poor people.

Young rich people are doing just fine.

I'd certainly like to believe I'm above the 50th percentile of incomes for my age, and I'm struggling to bring the costs of living to under 75-80% of my take home income. Given many young people aren't as fortunate as even I am I feel like there's a very large portion of the coming generation for whom owning a home will never be a reality.

Correct. I can't find the exact news article I read it, though this one shows the trend [0]. The most recent HILDA report shows that over 50% of < 30s in Aus will never own a home

[0] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-20/five-facts-which-show-...

Even if you artificially lower apartment rent, there would still be a lack of housing in cities. It would actually make the problem worse because more people could afford to live in cities, and less people would want to build new units.

Either young people need to be okay not living in cities, or governments need to encourage more housing to be built in cities. But, instead, young people want urban living and municipalities are only increasing restrictions on building new units. Obviously in this senario prices will go up, it's basic supply and demand.

Note: I am a young person living in a city.

The suburbs are as expensive, or even more expensive than the city. I've honestly considered moving closer to my job in the suburbs, but for the same rent I get a far less desirable neighborhood (i.e. no close by bars, bad transit, nosey neighbors, mostly generic chain stores etc).

Houses have to go somewhere. Or should people just be stuck spending hours commuting?

How many homes are investment rental homes or apartments with nobody that lives there? I'll bet a huge amount.

> But, instead, young people want urban living

I think most young people are trying to go where the jobs are more than anything.

This entirely. If you want competitive wages and non-backwards social groups you go to cities. I suspect there will be enclaves out in the suburbs soon as people make their money and switch mid life to more rural living where it's slower and more sustainable

Yep. Many of the people I went to school with are now back living in the town we grew up in because there are jobs available. Given th choice most of them would stay where they are rather than move to a city.

Artificially lowered apartment rent seems obviously flawed but how about just not artificially lowering supply? Surely these high prices should have a lot of developers chomping at the bit to turn low density accommodation in to high density accommodation.

Indeed, and I feel like not living near a city is the only realistic option. My hope is the eventual completion of the western metro line to Windsor might allow my commute to drop below an hour each way. At the moment the M2 motorway costs me about 15 hours of my life every week, which I'd really love to spend sleeping in when I'm exhausted, or writing, or playing with some new code, or really anything that doesn't involve sitting on a bus. Sadly even out of the city it's almost unaffordable, which is a shame.

I remember parking at e.g. Epping and catching the train to town. Is that not an option for you? You'd be able to catch some ZZZs on the train for part of that journey, rather than having to drive all the way.

I've tried it a few times. The closest station to here is Quakers Hill, which is roughly the same time on the train as I spend on the bus, with the added drive before hand. The comfort is much better but actually leaving my car there is a scary prospect.

Get a cheaper car...

I think you could solve the problem by rightous forbidding cars and non public transport in and around the city and replace them all with taxis,trains and underground trains,busses and shared cars. So you can travel within 30 to 45 minutes to the city even when you live 150 km away.

But that, that's just a pipe dream.

Everything with housing is a pipe dream, until the right person comes along for people to get behind and solve the problems for real

Too many landlords would lead to lower rents, not higher. The problem is caused more by the overly centralized structure of our cities (meaning a large proportion of jobs require you to commute to the CBD every day) combined with a cultural resistance to high-density living (meaning an undersupply of housing near to the CBD).

One of the fattest landlords is now President

This is why I moved to Perth.

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