CANBERRA, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Housing in Australia's biggest cities remains "severely unaffordable" despite a downturn in the market, an international survey has found.
The latest annual Demographia International Housing Affordability report analyzed the housing affordability in more than 300 metropolitan housing markets in Australia, Canada, China's Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, Britain and the United States.
It found that of the 23 Australian markets included in the survey, 16 were "severely unaffordable" with the median house price nationwide 5.7 times higher than the median income.
Sydney was the third least affordable market in the world, behind only China's Hong Kong and Vancouver, with houses worth 11.7 times the median income on average while Melbourne was fourth with a median multiple of 9.7.
Australia's five biggest cities were all considered "severely unaffordable" with Adelaide ranked the 16th least affordable out of 91 major markets, Brisbane 18th and Perth 24th.
The results came despite the house prices in nearly all of Australia's markets either falling or stagnating in 2018.
Housing "remains severely unaffordable in all of the major markets, and by a substantial margin in Sydney and Melbourne," Demographia's report said.
"Despite what has been called the largest Sydney price reduction in 35 years, house prices relative to incomes are more than double the rate of the early 1980s.
"In Sydney and Melbourne, median income households need at least three years' more income to pay for the median priced house than in 2004, when the first survey was published."
The Australian Bureau of Statistics in December revealed that Sydney housing prices fell 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2018, making it the market's worst quarter since 2005.
Of the seven Australian markets not considered severely unaffordable five were "seriously unaffordable," one "moderately unaffordable" and one "affordable."
