About canweaffordit.com.au

The Australian housing problem

Australian property is in a crisis of affordability — and a crisis of information.

The median dwelling value across Australia's capital cities now exceeds $800,000. In Sydney, the median house price has surpassed $1.4 million. A household earning the median Australian income of around $100,000 per year — before tax — faces a price-to-income ratio of more than 12:1 in Sydney, compared to a long-run historical average closer to 4:1.

The standard benchmark for housing affordability — spending no more than 30% of gross household income on housing costs — has become almost impossible to meet for renters and first home buyers in every major capital city. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that more than 3.3 million Australian households are in housing stress, defined as spending more than 30% of income on housing. Of those, more than 1.3 million are in severe housing stress — spending more than 50% of income on housing.

For renters, median advertised rents rose by more than 30% between 2020 and 2024 across most capital cities, according to CoreLogic and SQM Research. Vacancy rates in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth have regularly fallen below 1% — meaning fewer than one in every hundred rental properties is available at any given time.

Yet despite the scale of this problem, the tools available to help Australians understand their options have barely kept pace. Bank mortgage calculators are designed to generate leads. Comparison sites are funded by the lenders they compare. Real estate portals profit from transactions, not from helping you understand whether you can genuinely afford a property in a given suburb.

That gap — between the magnitude of the decision and the quality of free, independent information available — is why canweaffordit.com.au exists.

Who's behind it

Why we built this

canweaffordit.com.au was built out of frustration. The frustration of watching friends and family make the biggest financial decisions of their lives with inadequate tools — tools that couldn't tell them whether a suburb was actually affordable on their income, that produced mortgage repayment figures without mentioning stamp duty, LMI, or the APRA serviceability buffer, and that never mentioned what would happen to repayments if interest rates moved by 1%.

The problem is structural. Every major source of free property information in Australia has a financial incentive that creates a conflict of interest. Banks want you to apply for a loan. Brokers want you to engage their services. Real estate portals want you to click listings. None of them benefit from you deciding that a suburb or property is unaffordable and walking away. Their tools are optimised for conversion, not for education.

We took a different approach. canweaffordit.com.au is built on the premise that the most useful thing we can do for a first home buyer, an investor, or a renter assessing their options is to give them accurate, honest information — even when that information tells them that a suburb is out of reach, that LMI will cost them $20,000, or that a negatively geared property will run at a $1,200 monthly cash deficit before any tax benefit is realised.

Honest information is more useful than optimistic information. We believe Australians are capable of making good decisions with good data.

How our calculators work

Every calculator on canweaffordit.com.au is built around transparent, documented formulas — no black boxes, no proprietary algorithms, no outputs that can't be traced back to a clear mathematical model.

The 30% income rule

Our affordability scoring uses the standard 30% gross income benchmark endorsed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the ABS, and most state housing affordability frameworks. A suburb is classified as:

• Affordable if the estimated mortgage repayment (or median rent) is below 30% of gross household income
• Moderate stress if housing costs fall between 30% and 50% of gross household income
• Severe stress if housing costs exceed 50% of gross household income

The 30% threshold is a widely used heuristic, not a guaranteed financial safe harbour. It does not account for household size, other debt obligations, or living costs. We display it alongside the raw dollar figures precisely so that you can assess your own situation rather than relying on a single percentage.

The 80% LVR model

For buy affordability calculations, we model on an 80% loan-to-value ratio (LVR) by default — meaning a 20% deposit — because this is the standard threshold at which Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) is not required by most lenders. Borrowing above 80% LVR triggers LMI, which can add $5,000 to $35,000 or more to the cost of a purchase depending on the loan amount and LVR.

We also allow you to model lower deposit scenarios (5%, 10%) to show the LMI cost and the effect of a higher loan amount on monthly repayments. The First Home Guarantee (formerly FHLDS) allows eligible buyers to purchase with a 5% deposit without paying LMI — because the federal government guarantees up to 15% of the loan — and our calculator models this scheme explicitly.

Stamp duty methodology

Stamp duty (formally "transfer duty" in most states) is calculated using the official rate schedules published by each state and territory revenue office. We maintain separate rate tables for:

• NSW — Revenue NSW
• VIC — State Revenue Office Victoria
• QLD — Queensland Revenue Office
• WA — WA Department of Finance
• SA — RevenueSA
• ACT — ACT Revenue Office
• TAS — State Revenue Office Tasmania
• NT — NT Revenue Office

First home buyer concessions and exemptions — which vary significantly by state, property type, property value, and buyer circumstances — are modelled separately and applied based on your inputs. Our Methodology page documents the specific rules and thresholds applied in each state.

Mortgage repayment formula

Monthly repayments are calculated using the standard amortisation formula:

M = P × [r(1+r)ⁿ] / [(1+r)ⁿ − 1]

Where M is the monthly repayment, P is the principal (loan amount),r is the monthly interest rate (annual rate ÷ 12), and n is the total number of monthly payments (loan term in years × 12). This is the same formula used by every major bank and financial calculator. We apply it consistently and display the inputs used to produce every figure.

Our data sources

Every piece of data on canweaffordit.com.au comes from Australian government bodies or openly licensed public datasets. We do not use data from commercial real estate platforms, and we do not scrape or republish data in violation of any terms of service.

For the complete dataset inventory — including source URLs, data licenses, update schedules, and last-updated timestamps — see our Data Sources page.

Our commitment to transparency

Transparency is not a marketing claim for us — it is a structural constraint we build to. Every figure on this Site must trace back to a documented formula, a cited government source, or a stated assumption. If you can't verify how a number was produced, we shouldn't be showing it.

This means we make deliberate choices that sometimes make our tools look less impressive:

• We show costs, not just benefits. Every mortgage calculator shows the total interest payable over the life of the loan — which, on a 30-year $700,000 mortgage at 6.5%, is more than $840,000 in interest alone. Banks don't typically highlight this figure.
• We model LMI and show it explicitly. If you input a deposit below 20%, we calculate the estimated LMI premium and add it to the total cost of purchase. This is a real cost that is often buried or ignored.
• We show the APRA serviceability buffer. Lenders are required by APRA to assess whether borrowers can afford repayments at 3% above the loan rate. A borrower approved at a 6.5% rate must demonstrate they can service at 9.5%. We model this in our borrowing capacity calculator.
• We label estimates as estimates. Every calculator output is clearly labelled as an illustrative estimate. We display the assumptions used — interest rate, loan term, deposit percentage — so you can adjust them and understand the sensitivity.
• We link to the data source. Where possible, we link directly to the government page or dataset from which each figure is sourced, so you can verify it yourself.

We also acknowledge the limits of what we can calculate. Your individual borrowing capacity depends on your credit history, employment stability, other debts, and the specific assessment criteria of each lender — none of which we can access. Our estimates are a starting point, not a final answer. The final answer comes from a licensed mortgage broker or lender.

Our principles

Coverage — 15,000+ Australian suburbs

Our suburb database covers more than 15,000 Statistical Area 2 (SA2) regions and suburb-equivalents across all 8 states and territories, drawn from the ABS 2021 Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS). This is the same geographic framework used by the ABS for Census data, property price statistics, and government reporting.

For each suburb, we model buy affordability (based on median dwelling value and median household income), rent affordability (based on ABS rental data where available), and first home buyer scheme eligibility (based on state-specific property price caps for the FHBG, RFHBG, and state grant programs).

Suburb-level median dwelling values are updated periodically from the ABS Residential Property Price Indexes and supplementary data. Where suburb-level data is unavailable, we use the most granular available geographic aggregate (typically SA3 or SA4 level). The data freshness indicator shown on each suburb and calculator page shows the date of the most recent data update.

What we are not

canweaffordit.com.au is not a financial advice service. We do not hold an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) or Australian Credit Licence (ACL). We cannot recommend specific loan products, investment strategies, or whether any particular property represents good value for your circumstances.

We are an information and education platform. The appropriate use of our tools is to build your understanding before you engage with licensed professionals — mortgage brokers, financial advisers, accountants, solicitors — who can give advice tailored to your individual circumstances.

For our full legal disclaimer including limitation of liability and governing law, see the Disclaimer page.

Contact

Questions, data corrections, feedback, or media enquiries: contact us here.

Privacy-related matters (access requests, correction requests, complaints under the Privacy Act 1988): [email protected]

Advertising and partnership enquiries: advertise with us.

If you believe any data on this Site is inaccurate or out of date, please get in touch. We take data quality seriously and will investigate and correct any verified errors promptly.