State of Play sheds some new light on the household debt burden in Australia, including some fresh ways of looking at the incidence of mortgage stress.
The economic analysis in the report shows that 62 per cent of people who bought their first home in the past three years are experiencing mortgage stress, which is defined as having monthly repayments higher than 30 per cent of income.
In 2007 the mortgage to wage ratio was calculated as 4.1 nationally, with a ratio of 4.5 in NSW and 3.0 in Tasmania. These ratios are significantly higher than the same figures 10 years ago, when the mortgage to wage ratio was 3.1 for the nation as a whole, and 3.7 in NSW and 2.1 in Tasmania.
The August 2008 edition of State of Play: the Australian mortgage industry is jointly published by InfoChoice and The Sheet.
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