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Housing affordability is no news

I just did some work on housing affordability. 

All I did was compare my situation when I bought my first house in Hamilton NZ in 1987 with a similar example in 2015. 

My first house cost $60,000 it was a two bedroom house in much need of some really hard work. As an example the drive way would not have been acceptable for Fonterra tankers! Our neighbouring state house had young people sniffing glue. So it wasn't fancy. We had to borrow 100% - and the bank would only fund 80%. Our household income after tax was not more than $20,000. 

A similar house would cost around $300,000 (but I've used $400,000 in my analysis).  An hourly rate of $22.50ph ($45,000pa) would be about the equivalent income level so a net household income of around $75,000pa. 

The analysis shows the following:
Ratio
1987
2015
House Cost/net income
3.0x
5.3x
Debt Cost/net  income
69%
50%
Cost of bank debt/House cost
4.0x
1.3x

I prefer the modern kind of unaffordable housing.

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