Want to buy a typically-priced house in Gadigal/Sydney? As of December, the cost of that median residence was $1,595,310, up 10.6% from 2022. Across all Australian capitals, the price rise in 2023 was 7.8%.

For perspective, that put the ratio of housing prices to household income in Sydney at 13.3 times, making the city the second most unaffordable in the world after Hong Kong.

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A median-priced house in Naarm/Melbourne last year would set you back 9.9 times annual household earnings, not far behind San Francisco. Even Adelaide, at 8.2 times, was similar to Miami.

For rents, the story has been similar, with prices spiralling far beyond pay rises and the broader inflation rate. In the 12 months to December, Australian rents rose nationally by 9.1% cent for houses, and by 13.1% for units.

The median rent for all housing reached $580, or 44.6% of median weekly earnings of about $1300. If you’re in a single-income household, you’re probably deep into rental stress, usually understood as any figure above 30%.

Clearly, a heist of epic proportions is under way, stripping wealth from poorer and younger people.

But what’s the underlying cause? Why the housing madness?

That, increasingly, is what the financiers, the big property-owners, and their spin-doctors and shock-jocks are telling us.

Here, for example, is a headline from the Australian Financial Review late last year: “Housing and migration have collided. One will have to give.”

Migrants, unfortunately, are the easy-to-blame scapegoats.

Following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions........

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