Can you afford to live in Melbourne?

To rent in Melbourne without housing stress, a household income of about $113,000/year keeps the rent of $650/week at or below 30% of gross income — the standard affordability benchmark. That rent is our modelled median (no bond data published for Melbourne yet). Check your income →

To buy the median home ($1,320,000) with a 20% deposit of $264k, repayments at 6.2% over 30 years come to about $6,468/month — comfortable on roughly $259,000/year under the same 30% rule. Saving that deposit at $1,500/month takes about 14.7 years, before stamp duty of $73k. Run your own loan →

That price is an estimate, and probably too low. Unlike the rent above, no government publishes open sale prices for Victoria, so we model it from distance, population and income. Where we can check that model against real sales, it runs about 40% under — so treat this figure, and the deposit and repayments built on it, as a rough scale rather than a number to plan around. How we're fixing this →

Compared to the rest of Victoria, Melbourne is more expensive to buy than 96% of the state's suburbs (state median $330k) and pricier to rent than 91% (state median $445/week). It sits roughly 2 km from the Melbourne CBD as the crow flies.

For investors, the median rent against the median price gives a gross rental yield of about 2.6% before costs. Net yield calculator →

Modelled medians, not valuations — every formula above is documented on our methodology page.