It used to be that you ran away to Sydney. Now people run away from it. They run from insane, impossible real estate prices. They flee the wasted hours of sitting in traffic jams of neutron star densities. They escape the crushing expense of everything from a cup of coffee to their children’s education.

Sydney has always been the point at which global capital enters and leaves Australia. Because of that, the competition for scarce goods and services has always been fiercer and more punishing there and eventually it wears you down.

It’s a city for the young and the free. Free of debts. Free of commitments. Free of the weight and encumbrances of adult life. But even they are starting to feel it.

Fairfax Media analysis has revealed a mass exodus from Sydney. Credit:Kate Geraghty

The same way that all of the old, ramshackle Queenslanders that once housed generations of students in and around the inner core of Brisbane eventually disappeared from the rental market as they were renovated by young families, so too have thousands of terrace houses become impossibly expensive for renters in Sydney.