Are there any affordable homes left in Australia?
Only one in four Australian houses sell for less than $500,000 today
3 min
Twenty years ago, almost all houses and apartments sold in Australia were priced under $500,000. Ordinary families routinely bought houses on quarter-acre blocks and only the affluent elite were buying real estate above the million-dollar mark. At the time, we called them ‘millionaires’ and the term meant uber-wealth.
Over the next decade-and-a-half, the magnitude of change to home values was immense. After a period of very strong price growth over the 2000s and early 2010s, only 50 percent of the housing stock was selling below the half-million mark by 2015. And today, the proportion of homes selling below $500,000 has hit an all-time low at 24 percent of houses and 39 percent of apartments, according to a report by Ray White. Many families are adopting apartment living due to affordability constraints, and first home buyers in Sydney and Melbourne are routinely purchasing starter homes for $1 million or more.
Australia has not always been a rapid-growth property market. Price growth was extremely subdued between 1880 and the 1950s. Prices began moving up in the post-WW2 era due to accelerated population growth and the end of government property price controls in 1949, explains PropTrack economist Paul Ryan. Then came the credit boom after Australia’s finance industry was deregulated in the 1980s and 1990s. Ordinary citizens en masse were able to access funding to buy their own homes, and property prices have grown exponentially ever since, with one of the biggest spikes in values occurring in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Sydney has been the powerhouse of Australia’s property price growth over the past two decades, with the median value of a house now exceeding $1.1 million. Nerida Conisbee, chief economist at Ray White, says that over the past 12 months, less than 10 percent of all Sydney properties sold for less than $500,000. “Affordability is better in regional Australia, however, finding a low priced home in regional NSW is getting particularly difficult,” Ms Conisbee said. “Well under a third of all properties are now priced under $500,000.”
Over time, property prices in large regional towns with good road access to Sydney have boomed as people accepted a commuter lifestyle in exchange for the affordability that regional NSW offered. Today, those satellite cities are expensive themselves. For example, the median house price in Wollongong is $975,000, and on the Central Coast it is $890,000, according to CoreLogic data. A similar phenomenon has occurred in Victoria. The pandemic brought about the work-from-home era, which prompted many people to leave Australia’s two most expensive cities – Sydney and Melbourne – for more affordable markets, pushing up prices significantly in regional areas across the country.
Over the past five years, a change has occurred across the capital cities, with the two most affordable cities recording the strongest price growth. CoreLogic data shows Hobart house values have grown the most over the five years ending 31 July, with a 62.5 percent uplift to the median house price to $710,000, followed by Adelaide with a 46.7 percent increase to a median of $675,000.
Today’s rental crisis and the ongoing affordability challenges faced by young people have caused much political debate about how to boost Australia’s housing supply as quickly as possible. History shows that new supply is the key to keeping property prices affordable, and many experts argue that new high-density housing in areas with established infrastructure such as roads and services is the fastest way to provide more housing for the country’s rapidly growing population.
Ms Conisbee points out that high levels of apartment development in certain markets have kept prices more affordable. “Places where we have seen extremely high levels of apartment development have the most availability of low priced apartments,” Ms Conisbee said. “Gold Coast and Melbourne are expensive places to buy houses but there are a lot of low priced apartments in Melbourne CBD, Surfers Paradise and Southport.
“For houses, a strong development pipeline has kept outer Perth cheap with Baldivis and Armadale having the most houses being sold under $500,000 over the past 12 months. Canberra’s rapid building program has meant that the proportion of apartments sold under $500,000 drastically exceeds the number of houses sold under this price point.”
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A vibrant 1954 Palm Springs home featuring eight colorful murals by late artist Shawn Savage is on the market for $2.295 million. The 2,237-square-foot property features bold hot-pink doors, three bedrooms, a pool, mountain views and playful interiors blending modern glamour with classic Palm Springs style.
3 min
A bold 1950s home in Palm Springs, California, adorned with eight colorful murals by the late artist Shawn Savage, is coming to market ahead of the city’s annual Modernism Week.
The white stucco home on El Camino Way, built in 1954 and recently renovated, has an asking price of $2.295 million. Its staggered facade features three playfully abstract murals on either side of double-height hot pink doors.
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The sellers are Los Angeles-based partners John Freeman and Mathieu Faure, who knew it was “the one” when they saw it after several months of searching in the winter of 2023. “It’s a happy house,” Freeman said. “We really liked the feel of the house: the uniqueness, the openness, the brightness—and the art.”
Located in the Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs, which backs up to the San Jacinto Mountains, the 2,237-square-foot house features three bedrooms, an angled bonus room and a yard with a pool, desert mountain views and another colorful mural running alongside the pool.
“I never thought in my life I would have a house with pink doors,” said Faure, a producer at Apple TV who is originally from Paris. “It’s so colorful, it’s so different. And so Palm Springs.”
The layout of the home creates a smooth flow from the front doors through the open-plan common area—a foyer, bar, and living and dining room—into the kitchen around a fireplace wall and out to the yard. A corridor leads to a private bedroom wing, where the primary suite has floor-to-ceiling windows and the primary bath is only a tad smaller than the bedroom.
Faure has filled the home with Jonathan Adler furniture, rugs and accessories, riffing on the energetic California vibes of the house to create an aesthetic of “modern American glamour,” he said.
“It was enjoyable for me to play with different types of furniture and make this house ‘happy chic,’ as I describe it,” he said.
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“He did a fantastic job,” said Freeman, who is an attorney and consultant. “It does kind of bring a smile to my face whenever I walk into the house.”
Since the furniture and decor were chosen for the particularities of the space, the couple is open to selling them with the home. Their West Hollywood house is already furnished; the collection doesn’t match the vibes of a Houston loft they bought near family; and Faure can’t imagine these pieces in New York—where he’s lived in the past—he said.
The duo bought the Palm Springs house for $1.925 million in 2024, according to property records, and will list the home Monday. They are represented by Stewart Smith, Patrick Jordan and Kevin Stanley of Bennion Deville Homes/Luxury Portfolio International.
The previous owners had purchased the home in 2021 for $975,000 and then spent more than two years and $700,000 on the renovation, according to Realtor.com. They commissioned Savage, a local Palm Springs artist and painter known for his joyful abstract work, to decorate the home.
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Savage, who died in 2024, lived in the Coachella Valley from 2003, and his work can be found in various local institutions and is on exhibit at the Illumine Gallery in Palm Springs. “Some artists pass through a place. Shawn Savage became a part of it,” the gallery’s description states.
Unsurprisingly, the murals invite lots of friendly conversations, as well as guided tours and interested lookers, but never to a degree that it disturbed the peacefulness of their home or the neighborhood, the sellers said. “It felt like living in an art gallery, and you have the exterior that you would share with the world,” Faure explained.
The neighborhood also played a role in their decision to buy, because of its access to the hiking trails of the San Jacinto Mountains, the lack of through-roads and the neighborly environment.
“It’s a very friendly place,” Faure said.
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