AFFORDABILITY HAS CHANGED, BRISBANE HAS CHANGED, AND OUR METRICS NEED TO CATCH UP

Affordability gets tossed around a lot, usually in neat soundbites or outdated ratios that were built for a very different Australia. The old three-times-income rule belonged to an era of single pay packets, conservative lending, and a cost of living that feels almost mythical now.

Today’s households look nothing like that model.

Dual incomes are the norm, side hustles fill the gaps, and government support quietly props up large parts of the market. Yet our affordability measures have barely moved.

So, we rebuilt them.

Why ratios still matter

Most economists fall back on price-to-income and rent-to-income ratios because, blunt instrument or not, they tell you one thing very clearly:

How high the wall is for people trying to get in.

Whether they are buying or renting, that barrier defines who can stay in a city and who slowly gets pushed out of it.

A more modern benchmark

The classic Demographia thresholds were built on an outdated reality. Brisbane in 2025 needs a different lens.

Our updated ownership bands reflect what households actually do today, not what they did in 1995:

• Under 4 times income: very affordable

• 4 to 6 times income: affordable

• 6 to 8 times income: unaffordable

• Over 8 times income: severely unaffordable

For renting, the old thirty-percent rule is equally blunt, so we apply four bands that better reflect contemporary living patterns:

• Under 20 percent of income: very affordable

• 20 to 30 percent: affordable but tightening

• 30 to 40 percent: unaffordable

• Over 40 percent: severely unaffordable

We also run a second set of calculations using wages and salaries only.

Why? Because that’s where younger households, key workers, and early-career professionals sit. The people who keep Brisbane running. The people who usually rent first, then buy later if they can.

This approach shows you the reality more sharply.

Brisbane: A clear case study in drift

In the Brisbane City Council area, the typical household now earns about $216,725 per year. Around sixty percent of that—roughly $131,000—comes from wages and salaries, with the rest made up of business income, investments, superannuation and government support.

The problem is the gap between incomes and dwelling values.

Since 2015:

• Household incomes are up… 4 percent

• Detached house prices are up… 125 percent

• Apartments and townhouses: 64 percent

That mismatch is the root of the affordability problem.

Using our ownership benchmarks, detached housing in Brisbane now sits firmly in the unaffordable zone, above six times gross household income. Attached housing is sliding in the same direction.

For households relying only on wages or a single income stream, buying a house is essentially out of reach.

Buying an older unit is still doable, but the entry stock tends to be small one-bedrooms or dated walk-ups. And even those now trade at multiples previous generations never faced.

Renting isn’t the safety valve it used to be

Four bedroom houses now pull almost thirty percent of household income, right on the stress threshold.

Two bedroom apartments, once very affordable, have drifted out of that bracket.

If you are renting on wages alone, especially in the bottom half of the income distribution, you’re already feeling it. Many of Brisbane’s key workers—nurses, police, teachers, hospitality staff—are now priced out of the city they serve.

Brisbane has 662,250 working residents.

Around 252,500 of them are key workers.

If a significant share of those people can’t afford to live near hospitals, schools, or government hubs, the city doesn’t just lose people. It loses resilience. It loses the ability to function.

And, as one developer put it recently,

“You can’t run a hospital from the hinterland.”

Where to from here

If household incomes can’t keep pace with dwelling values, something else has to give.

The solution is not one grand gesture, but an accumulation of small, targeted, practical reforms:

• More flexible setbacks

• Slightly increased site cover

• Sensible height allowances

• Less rigid parking requirements

• Faster approvals

• A broader menu of housing types such as terraces, secondary dwellings and plexes

Brisbane needs more supply in the middle of the market, not the margins of it.

Without that, affordability worsens, key workers leave, and liveability frays.

This is not just a housing issue.

It is an economic one.

A community one.

A future one.

And Brisbane, like most of Australia, is at the point where the math no longer balances without change.