Welcome to Paint by Numbers, a new series about the big issues of the day via the numbers. Our first instalment: the story of housing in Australia via 30 years in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s home suburb of Marrickville.
Price of Albanese’s first house, bought in 1990: $146,000
Average annual salary in 1990*: $25,511.20
Value of a “representative cottage” in Marrickville 1990: $180,000
Price that Albanese’s first house sold for in 1995: $186,000
Price of Albanese’s second house, bought in 1995: $242,000
Average annual salary in 1995-1996: $28,494
Price that Albanese’s second house sold for in 2001: $442,000
Average annual salary in 2000-2001: $34,745
Price of a house Albanese bought in 2006: $997,500
Price of (a different) house Albanese bought in 2012: $1,115,000
Price the 2012 house was sold for in 2024: $2.5 million
Median house price in Marrickville in 2024: $1,920,000
Average salary in November 2023*: $73,495.20
Growth in house value in Marrickville, Sydenham and Petersham, 1992-2022: $1,539,280, or 660.1%
Growth in annual salary 1990*-2023*: $48,984.20 or 192%
*Based on an annualisation of the ABS average weekly wage for all employees at the time.
I think Charlie Lewis should also have noted the changing demographic of greater Marrickville over the decades. When I bought my first house my mother was concerned that I was living in “that slum”. When the postcode moved one block so it became Enmore, not Marrickville, my car insurance premiums dropped as the car was no longer garaged in a “high risk” area. For many years my neighbours were either old working class Australians or first generation Portuguese or Greek immigrants, but by the early 2000s, when they sold, the people who moved in were from the Eastern suburbs or North Shore. The prices of. houses Albanese bought and sold after 2000 reflect the social changes as much as the lunacy of the housing market which was triggered by Costello & Howard’s economic folly.
The awfulness of this for poorer Australians, including students, is that they are now being priced out of housing close to where they work or study.
Agree, a comparison of postcodes vs. a capital’s gentrified inner city would be more applicable, and maybe including comparable apartments or units.
Nonetheless, if we ignore how salaries have stagnated, the headline price is not that far above value if applying the 7% rule i.e. price doubles every decade, just to tread water on holding costs; some suggest more realistic is 10% (double 5 years), if so the price has lagged….
You’re absolutely right Joanna.
Back in its beginnings I think Marrickville was rather well-to-do, but certainly by the nineteen sixties through to the eighties it had a bit of a bad reputation.
My grandparents lived at Lewisham and I’d visit in school holidays for a week in the late sixties early seventies.
They didn’t own a car (ever) but each morning my grandfather would walk to Marrickville and back (it seemed to take forever to me) just to visit his favourite greengrocer and butcher to buy what was needed for the day.
My father particularly was always upset when he found out I’d been “dragged over to that dirty place” (Marrickville) and swore I’d never go there again (my grandparents) – ha ha.
He died before Marrickville’s renaissance into the expensive suburb it’s now become (much like Lewisham, Enmore, Newtown and others).
Still, I thank Charlie for his lighthearted article, in allowing me a few moments of laughter thinking of times long ago.
And even more awful was how Oz chose to keep their aspirational virtue intact by voting against doing anything to mitigate prices in 2019.
Could we now have an equivalent article on the costs of housing v. average salary in the electorates of Cook or Dickson?
Excellent suggestion, MJM.
What’s the point of this? It’s not a secret the cost of housing has been rising inexorably. Is Albanese personally responsible for it in Marrickville? Why not pick somewhere it was gone up even more, Point Piper or the holiday mansion at Portsea for example.
I see Albo has capped his teeth like Howard did. Check JWH circa 1977 delivering his first federal budget and see him 20 years later as PM. Wouldn’t have been elected as PM with teeth like he had in 1977. He looked like a dodgy, low rent suburban solicitor which, in Dorian Gray style, he carried within him on his journey through Parliament while he worked on his externalities. Albo is doing the same and while people focus on what they think are the “intellectual” aspects of Albos politics and political economy, let me tell you that things are often that simple. Albo knows it and has learnt well in a way that shoddy Bill could never.
They all do it. Look at almost any TV personality, and odds are they’ve had their teeth done in some way. Politicians are the same. Howard didn’t stop with the teeth, of course – he had fillers everywhere. He must have hated his minders insisting those luxurious eyebrows be cut to more telegenic length; Howard always wanted to be Menzies Mk II. Shame he didn’t do anything about that rubbery upper lip – but it was a cartoonist’s gift.
That Albo lived in a house. Todays Albo could possibly be living in a car, (thanks, partially, to Albo). That is the real story.