Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size The sweet spot in Sydney is an elusive, almost mythical place. An affordable home close to the shops, with a reasonable commute to a decent paying job is difficult enough to find. But the juggle becomes even harder once you add school choices and the expectation of enriching leisure time including overseas travel. Climbing the Sydney property ladder has become more difficult. Credit:Jim Rice We're a city searching for a combination that delivers the best of all worlds or, at least, the best available. For almost all of us, there will be compromise. The great Sydney trade-off: to live in beautiful scenery but spend three hours a day shuttling between home and the office. To live near the station but forever hear the rattle of the trains. To take a job with longer hours so the kids can go to private school. “One thing that’s changed is that you can’t trade up the property ladder nearly as easily as you could’ve 20 years ago,” says leading urban economist, Terry Rawnsley. “That means people are trying to squeeze all these different choices into a much more rigid housing market ... part of it is that the city has grown by a million people over the past 10 or 15 years. A lot of those people are looking for a large enough home, in a place with good proximity to jobs and a high amenity local area. But Sydney hasn’t actually built a whole lot more of that.”


Loading Despite the recent downturn in Sydney’s property market, Domain Group data shows the city’s median house remains above the $1 million mark. That's 90 per cent higher than it was a decade ago. Sydney has a lot of well-paid workers but years of weak wages growth has curbed the spending power of the city's households. Polling published by the Committee for Sydney last year found eight in 10 Sydney residents felt cost of living pressures had intensified. Higher lifestyle expectations have made trade-offs more complicated. Sydney-based social researcher Mark McCrindle says that, for many, being average today means “one car per adult, the option of private schools, overseas holidays every few years, a new smartphone each every couple of years and a device or two per child”. Many refuse to make Sydney’s trade-offs and leave the city. Analysis of census data published recently by The Sydney Morning Herald showed that over the past four decades, 129 people left the city each day for elsewhere in Australia while only 85 have moved the other way. Last year almost 120,000 people departed NSW for other states, most of them from Sydney.


Even so, the diversity of Sydney’s economy and a plentiful supply of well-paid jobs in knowledge-based industries including finance, professional services, IT, engineering, marketing and media remain attractive. The city continues to be a magnet for overseas migrants. So what kinds of trade-offs are Sydney families making? Housing headaches The ups and downs of the Sydney property market are always in the headlines. Less attention is given to the profound ways they shape our behaviour. The high cost of Sydney's well-located housing is fundamental to many of the trade-offs made by locals. A growing number of families are choosing high-density living near major employment and transport hubs. Units and apartments now account for more than one in four Sydney dwellings, about twice the national average.


McCrindle’s research shows many young adults in Sydney are choosing to rent in a well-situated neighbourhood instead of buying in a less convenient location. “Rather than buying where they don’t want to live, like their parents did, they’ll rent where they do want to live,” he said. “Sometimes they will still buy but it’s an investment elsewhere.” Census data shows the share of Sydney households who rent has risen steadily over the past decade. A recent study by the Grattan Institute think-tank found the proportion of homeowners declined in 87 per cent of Greater Sydney neighbourhoods between 2011 and 2016. Rawnsley, an economist at consultancy SGS Economics and Planning, has noticed a small but growing trend for families to buy or rent a crash pad close to work or schools while keeping a larger house on the city’s outskirts or beyond. “These are not uncommon stories,” he said. “People who want to have a place in the Kangaroo Valley, or wherever, and an inner-city crash pad are taking their housing budget and splitting it in half to try and get the best of both worlds … they want to live a country lifestyle but be close to work during the week.”


The long commute Hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders sacrifice time commuting to facilitate housing and other lifestyle choices. It’s one of the city’s most common trade-offs. The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics estimates about 2 million Australians commuted for 90 minutes or more each day in 2016, many of them in Sydney and Melbourne. Rawnsley says there has been growth in the "mega-commuter" in Australia’s big cities – those will to spend several hours each day getting to work. About 2 million Australians commuted for 90 minutes or more each day in 2016. Credit:Brook Mitchell There’s evidence workers will tolerate longer travel times to work in return for a well-paid job.

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