If you want to borrow to buy and live in an Australian capital city and still live comfortably, the question you need to answer is this: how much do I have to pay to do this?

Sydney’s Bellevue Hill would cost you around $95,582 a month. If that’s out of your league, the country’s cheapest suburbs will slug you $10,000 a month!

New figuring from CoreLogic shows that to be comfortable in a $10,000 a month suburb, you need $15,000 or $180,000 a year!

This revelation means buying a house to live in requires double incomes, with the median salary being around $93,000.

The Daily Telegraph looked at the struggle to buy a home in our capital cities and found the following:

1. Experts say to live comfortably you need 50% of your pay to cover essentials.

2. You’d have 30% in the bank after meeting those essentials.

3. Based on the average home price of $1 million, experts say to be comfortable, your average income a month should be $13,118. To be well-off, you need $18,365.

4. In Sydney’s cheapest suburb, a double income family will need $10,360 a month to be comfortable or $14,504 to be well-off!

Apart from making buying a home increasingly more difficult (and lenders do this figuring too), potential homeowners are increasingly looking at apartments. But that window might not remain open for long! “Young people are looking at apartments as an option,” said Ray White economist Nerida Conisbee. “In Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, we are seeing apartment prices increase more quickly than house prices. We think that’s to do with affordability and people look at suburbs they want to live in. They definitely can’t afford a house but can afford an apartment.”

Conisbee says all these developments around rising house prices and near impossible affordability has made the rent-vest option more attractive. That’s where a home buyer purchases a property to purposely rent out as a landlord/investor (which gives tax deductions appeal) and then rent where they’d really like to buy and live but can’t afford to do that as a homeowner.

There’s one big concern that one day might make capital city properties more affordable and that’s if we have a job-killing recession! With so many homeowners on very tight budgets, if unemployment surges, then forced selling would bring prices and homeowning affordability down, big time!

Let’s hope whatever Treasurer Chalmers, RBA boss Bullock and President Trump do to their economies (and then financial markets) doesn’t create a recession any time soon.

Locally, politicians must make changes to increase the supply of homes or else this crazy property problem will only get worse.