SBS Indonesian contributor Dina Indrasafitri tries to find out the factors that caused this issue to occur in Australia and Indonesia.
The State of the Housing System Australia Report 2024 reported 2023 as the year in which housing affordability sunk to its worst level on record.
Thus, even with a deposit, the percentage of homes sold in 2022-2023 that were affordable for a median income household had been a meager 13 percent.
An average Australian household in the 1990s needed around six years to save up for a deposit, while these days it takes 12 years.
Matthew Bowes from The Grattan Institute pinpointed the lacking supply of houses in the Australian market to be a strong force driving property prices up. The Australian government, he continued, is shifting its strategies to deal with the housing affordability issue by addressing obstacles in the move to increase housing supply.
In Indonesia, working and middle class income earners are lamenting climbing house prices in big cities. Their incomes, they said, hardly match up with the prices.
Dwiyanti Kusumaningrum, a Researcher at The National Agency for Research and Innovation of The Republic of Indonesia, said that the consumers in Jakarta and other urban areas are constantly pushed to increase their buying power.
However, while the increasing house prices are highly influenced by soaring land prices, a factor that sits far outside the control of most millennials and Gen Z-ers.
Moreover, the Indonesian government’s policies aimed to assist first home buyers are often ineffective, especially in big cities like Jakarta.
Elisa Sutanudjaja, Director of Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, said that the Indonesian government prioritised assistance for big developers while the majority of housing in Indonesia were sourced by house buyers and dwellers themselves.
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