AUSTRALIANS have to work almost three times harder to pay off the average family home than they did 50 years ago.

Figures compiled by CommSec for The Sunday Telegraph reveal homebuyers on the average income now have to work for 19,374 hours to buy the average Australian house with the average mortgage.

Based on an eight-hour day and a five-day working week, that equates to about 10 years of work. In reality, it takes much longer to own a home, because wages must pay for all living expenses, not just housing.

In 1960, it took homebuyers just 7500 hours to pay off the average mortgage.

CommSec chief economist Craig James said that half a century ago, average wage-earners took home the equivalent of $1.08 an hour.

They needed to work 25 hours to meet the monthly mortgage repayment of $25, based on an average five per cent interest rate and a mortgage of $4620.

Today, the average worker earning $30.04 an hour spends 70.7 hours - or almost two weeks of the month - at work to cover the monthly mortgage repayment for an average $283,000 loan at a 6.64 per cent interest rate.

The figures show rising costs and growing property prices have largely outstripped wages and young couples today need to work longer and harder to achieve the great Australian dream of owning their homes.

Whereas homes were once affordable on a single wage, families now realistically need two incomes to fund a mortgage. "This is your single biggest purchase," Mr James said. "This is where people are living.

"We're building bigger and better homes, so it was always likely we were going to be paying more in terms of the mortgage - and we're certainly working longer to pay for that.

"We're working longer, but we're probably working more flexibly and in jobs that we like."

Mr James said that in Australia, unlike other countries, there was a lot of pressure to buy rather than rent and homeowners often saw their mortgages as a method of saving.

"Records from the Commonwealth Bank suggest more than 70 per cent of people are paying more than they need to in terms of their home loans, so they're ahead of their loans.

"People see the home as a way of saving; they see it as an outlet for their finances. In other parts of the world, that's not the case, but Australia has always had an affinity with the home.

"In the 1960s, it was a simpler life. Now more money is spent on housing, computers, the internet, mobile phones, whereas before it was food, clothing, transport.

"We do have more opportunities now, but whether we're happier remains to be seen."

Sydney University anthropologist and author Stephen Juan said it now took two incomes and 30 years to pay off the average home. Half a century ago, it was one income and 15 years.

Mortgages costing the average household 29 per cent of its income put huge strains on the family unit, Dr Juan said.

"With that kind of inflation for the biggest item a middle-class family buys in their lifetime, which is the family home, when you have that kind of colossal increase that has been greater than the percentage increase in salaries - that's the reason we have the crunch.

"There's so much pressure on us. We're losing our leisure time, we're losing our time for families, we're having to commute further and further to get to work, we're finding it more and more difficult to pay our mortgages.

"Economically, we're being really stressed, and there's not enough time to do everything we have to do."

Dr Juan said that 50 years ago, promises of technology brought predictions of an easier life and more time available for family and healthier lifestyles.

"It was said we would have more time and be a leisure class because the machines would do the work," he said.

"What has happened, however, is that you have to pay for these materials and for this technology.

"We've got better technology and better leisure-time activities available, but we don't have the leisure time. It's a catch-22."

Murray Robson and Fiona Kelly consider themselves and their children Dylan, five, and Liam, three, to be an average Australian family.Both parents, in their mid-30s, work hard to provide for their young family and pay off the remaining $315,000 of their mortgage on a three-bedroom fibro house at North Narrabeen.

The couple bought the property in 2002 with a $515,000 mortgage, on which they repay almost $2400 a month.

Ms Kelly, a television scriptwriter who works from home four days a week, told The Sunday Telegraph it was hard to juggle mounting daily expenses and the cost of the mortgage and have much left over.

"There's not much time and money for ourselves," she said.

"I basically work when the kids are at school and kindy and at night to get everything done, so there's no watching TV at night.

"Maybe Saturday nights are the only time when I'm not doing stuff in the office. When the kids go to bed, you do more work or try and get housework done, and you're always tired. It's exhausting.

"But at the end of a long day it was all worth it," Ms Kelly said.

"It's worth it if you can get the moments where you take some time off and just have fun together," she said.

"You have to say, 'Let's just go to the park and play cricket' or 'Let's go for a nice walk.'

"The shopping will get done - we're not going to starve."