Housing affordability discourse in Australia is starting from the wrong place.

it begins with comparing median wages to house prices, "a cheap house is worth six years income," or, "a median wage earner needs half their income for repayments," etc.

Comparing to the median is unhelpful.

The median wage is the amount that 50% of workers earn less than. The statistical cohort is "all workers."

But housing affordability can't be about, "all workers," because mortgages are on 30 year terms, so if you're entering the housing market percariously with less than 30 years of career remaining, you probably won't ever pay it off, and will finish your career with a residual debt.

So the only cohort that really matters from an affordability standpoint is "people who have (significantly) more than 30 years of earning potential remaining."

That is: People quite early in their careers.

If you can't afford housing on the income you have in the first ten years of your work life, you might not ever afford it.

My parents bought their first home when my father, the only household earner, was 20 years old, and had just finished his motor mechanic apprenticeship. I was born about a year later. Two years after that they upsized.

That used to be NORMAL. That's the world we had, but left behind. Deliberately, by policy.

That's where the affordability conversation needs to be centered: How come people on moderately low single incomes can't afford it, where previously they could?