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GDP IS UP BUT NOBODY FEELS RICHER
Why the economic numbers you keep hearing say almost nothing about whether you can afford a home
Every few months a headline arrives telling us the economy grew. GDP is up. Growth is back. Somewhere a treasurer looks pleased. And somewhere else, a couple in their thirties who cannot get near a deposit reads that same headline and feels nothing at all, because it has no bearing on their life.
That gap is the whole story. GDP measures how much activity is sloshing through the economy. It was never built to tell you whether people are living well. Add a million people, all of whom need food and power and somewhere to sleep, and the number climbs while the average person is no better off. More activity. More mouths. A smaller slice each.
What actually shapes how people live never shows up in that headline figure. What your pay buys once inflation has had its way with it. What housing costs you. Whether you own anything at all. Whether you could ride out one bad month without it becoming a bad year. Get those right and life gets better. Miss them and it doesn't, no matter how healthy things look from a podium.
The one we watch up close is housing, and it has become the great dividing line in this country. Not income. Not job title. Ownership. Two people can earn the exact same salary, and the one who bought an apartment a decade ago now lives in a completely different financial universe to the one still renting. One has an asset quietly working while they sleep. The other hands 40% of their pay to a landlord and starts the whole thing again every 12 months.
We see it every week. The people getting ahead in Brisbane are not always the ones on the biggest salaries. Very often they are simply the ones who own. A fairly ordinary apartment in New Farm, bought years ago, has done more for its owner's security than any pay rise could. That is an uncomfortable thing to say out loud. It is also true.
This isn't us telling you to rush out and buy something you cannot afford. Overpaying for a dud in a panic is its own trap, and we would talk you straight out of it. But if the country is splitting into people who own and people who rent, and it is, then getting onto that ladder sensibly, at the right time and in the right building, will matter more than almost any other money decision you ever make.
So the next time you hear the economy is strong, hold it lightly. Ask the better question. Can people your age afford somewhere decent to live? If the answer is no while the graphs keep climbing, the graphs are measuring the wrong thing.
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