An aging two-bedroom house has sold for $1.9 million despite being 45km from the centre of Sydney, which is now the world’s second most unaffordable city after Hong Kong.
The red-brick house on Australian Street in St Marys, a working class suburb with crime rates double the state average in the city’s far west, set a postcode record at auction on Saturday, agent Peter Diamantidis from Ray White told 7 News.
The successful bidder, Mr Tong, said he was “feeling great” after securing the home, which is on a 1,208sqm block.
“Sydney is becoming unaffordable, but you look at it now, we’ve just sold for close to $2 million, maybe in 10 more years it might be $4 million,” Mr Diamantidis said.
The sale comes after a new report found Sydney is now more unaffordable than any other city in the world apart from Hong Kong, with Adelaide in sixth, Melbourne ninth, Brisbane 11th and Perth 15th.
The 2025 Demographia International Housing Affordability report released last week assessed 95 housing markets in Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the, United States in the third quarter of 2024.
San Jose was third, followed by Vancouver and Los Angeles. Honolulu was seventh, San Francisco eighth, San Diego 10th, and London 12th.
The Australian markets combined had a median in the “impossibly unaffordable” category – meaning prices are more than three times the “affordable” median, as did Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane.
Report author, Demographia principal Wendell Cox from Chapman University’s Centre for Demographics and Policy, said the unaffordability of the Australian markets was astonishing.
“Even the smallest Australian market, Adelaide endures an impossibly unaffordable median multiple of 10.9, ranked 90th among the 95 markets. Melbourne, with impossibly unaffordable median multiple of 9.7, is the 87th least affordable,” he said.
“Brisbane was an impossibly unaffordable 9.3 and ranked 85th out of 95. Perth at 8.3, was the 82nd least unaffordable market.
“It is remarkable that these markets are less affordable than widely recognised world cities like New York, London, or Chicago.”
Joel Kotkin, director of the Centre for Demographics and Policy, said growing housing unaffordability had been devastating for homebuyers in much of the Anglosphere.
“These high prices are largely the product of policies that seek to limit growth on the periphery, which has been the usual way that cities have grown,” he wrote.
“The Demographia report has shown that where such policies predominate, for example in the United Kingdom, California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Zealand, Australia and much of Canada, the results are disastrous, at least for potential homebuyers.”
The increases in housing affordability come after three years of record-high immigration under the Labor government, with more than 1.5 million immigrants arriving in Australia – more than the population of Adelaide – pushing home prices and rents up.
Header image: The St Marys home that sold for $1.9 million (Ray White).
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