Gee, you must be pretty old Rhrosty, or have a rose coloured memory.

While I do agree that things were better 50 years ago, I don't remember them being that good.

I bought my first house in 1960. It was an ex housing commission house, so not in a highly favoured area. Still those areas weren't as bad as today, back when everyone worked for a living, including housing commission tenants. Benefits were too low for todays bludger mob to survive.

It was a simple, but sound house, & cost 5 times my salary, which was about average, or very little less. A house in somewhere like Caringbah, near the surf, to which I aspired, was about a thousand quid more, & out of reach. [See how high my aspirations back then] I had an hours drive to do a bit of surfing.

Repayments in those days of 4.25% interest on home loans was still 24% of my income, so paying it off in anything under 10 years would have been a pipe dream. Don't forget these were the days when the lady stayed home & raised the kids.

To put that in perspective, my family built a house in Young NSW, in 1955. Also a simple 3 bed, built by a friend at a sharp price, it had cost 3500 pounds, plus 500 for the land.

Dad was a four figure man, very well paid at over 1000 a year, so even in a country backwater, about 5 years average income was much closer to the house price.