>>The average cost of rent for a person here on Oahu in Honolulu is 74% of the average salary. Want to own a home? Average monthly mortgage cost is 118% of average salary. In other words you can rent and be broke forever and you can't ever buy a place. I see 4 or more people living in a 1 room studio apt all the time. Santa Cruz California -- where the rent is 82% of average salary - is the only city worse in the USA right now.
It's not good. NZ calculations had mortgage payments well over 100% of the average salary by 2015 which is why calculations now assume there will be 2 working buyers. Auckland prices are ever higher, into the multiple $millions in inner city suburbs so that mortgage payments would be at least double or triple the average salary.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
