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Sydney named world's second most expensive city for housing

Xinhua, January 24, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Australian city of Sydney has been named the second most expensive city for housing in the world on Tuesday, only behind Hong Kong.

Research group Demographia rated 29 cities as being "severely unaffordable" in this years Housing Affordability Survey, and five of those cities can be found in Australia.

Sydney was by far the worst of those though, with the median price of a house in the harborside city coming in at 12.2 times the median annual household income for residents, while Hong Kong topped the list with 18.1 times income.

Since 2012, the price of a house in Sydney has increased by 69 percent, while the second most expensive Australian city, Melbourne, had prices rise by 51 percent over the same period.

Debt to GSP ratios have also increased exponentially since 1988 for households in New South Wales over the last 30 years, sitting just under 50 percent in 1988, to now be well over 150 percent in 2017.

Gladys Berejiklian, the newly installed Premier of New South Wales has vowed to tackle Sydney's housing crisis as one of her key focus areas of her new Government. Endit