Subj : Re: New to this
To : Nightfox
From : boraxman
Date : Sat Apr 19 2025 12:17 pm
On 18 Apr 2025 at 10:03a, Nightfox pondered and said...
Ni> Re: Re: New to this
Ni> By: boraxman to Gamgee on Fri Apr 18 2025 05:02 pm
Ni>
Ni> bo> In Australia house prices have been pretty much going up steeply, alm
Ni> bo> continuously for 20 years. Even on a managers salary, I could not bu
Ni> bo> house I grew up in, and neither of my parents finished school.
Ni>
Ni> House prices have been going up in the US as well, and I feel like house
Ni> prices have especially skyrocketed in the last 5 years or so. It
Ni> definitely feels like a seller's market. I feel like with the prices the
Ni> way they are, I don't know how so many people can afford them, and I
Ni> wonder if the market is going to burst and prices might have to come
Ni> down.
Ni>
Ni> I bought a house in 2015, a 1,644 square foot 2-story house which was
Ni> $295,000 at the time (house prices widely vary acros sthe US, but I
Ni> think that was about average here for that house at the time). I sold
Ni> that house in 2020 when I got divorced, and now, a seller would probably
Ni> be asking around $420,000 or more for the same house. And I'm in a
Ni> (fairly good sized) suburb; in the 'big' city we're next to, I've seen
Ni> house prices upwards of $700,000 and higher for an average house with
Ni> nothing really special.
Ni>
The median house price in Melbourne, Australia is $918,000 AUD which is $623,000 in $USD.
So half our houses cost more than that. This will include houses in fringe suburbs, which are 35km + away from the centre. So the reality is worse.
In Sydney, the media is $1.16 million or $743,000 $USD. Again, the cheaper houses are on the fringes, away from jobs.
I've literally had to turn down jobs because I couldn't afford to move where the job was, and these were leadership roles too. Then these companies complain they can't find anyone...
TEachers cannot afford this. Schools complain they can't get teachers. See the problem here? Workers are priced out from where people need them to be. You can't just say "well, they should move out to another town" which is what some braindead people actually say. If people did that, you'll have no teachers, cleaners, operators, sanitation workers, administrative assistants, nurses, etc, etc, etc.
Then to solve the "skills shortage", they bring in more people, driving the cost up!!
