by Stefanie Balogh
BRISBANE has the nation’s least affordable homes after Perth, with nine out of 10 city dwellers paying over-the-top house prices.
One in five Queenslanders on moderate incomes buy homes within their means but when it gets to Brisbane just 9.8 per cent of houses are affordable.
This cost of living squeeze is detailed in a series of new reports out today and backs up what many Queenslanders are feeling.
Brisbane is second only to Perth, which has just 5.5 per cent home affordability.
The Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) Reform Council’s first baseline performance report compiles data for all state and territory governments and the Federal Government.
It measures them on their performance in key areas such as housing affordability.
The report says that in Brisbane “the typical home price was the same as Sydney” but there was less diversity in the market and “income levels were much lower than in Sydney”.
It says the typical house price in Brisbane of $340,000 was much higher than the affordable home price of $270,000, according to 2007-08 previously unpublished Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
A moderate weekly income is defined as $1545 a household before tax is paid.
The Reform Council argues that benchmarking how well the states do on health, housing, indigenous and disability results is hard because much of the data is out of date or lacking in quality.
“At present there are significant limitations in the availability of data across all four areas . . . We’ve urged COAG to address these gaps so that we can accurately compare and assess year-on-year changes,” COAG Reform Council chairman Paul McClintock said.
The report, which independently assesses the states against COAG national agreements, also found Queensland had the shortest waiting times for elective surgery in 2007-08 with a wait of 27 days compared to the national average of 34 days.
In the same reporting period, two million Australians went to hospital emergency departments with illnesses that could have been treated by GPs. This was 40 per cent of all those in emergency departments.
And the report found that in 2007-08 about one-quarter of Australian adults were obese, and Queensland rates for lung, bowel and cervical cancer, and melanomas were significantly higher than elsewhere in the nation.
*Article sourced from: http://www.couriermail.com.au/property/brisbanes-has-least-affordable-homes-after-perth/story-e6frequ6-1225875210766?from=public_rss
