Facebook followers of Victorian Labor tyro Kos Samaras are weighing up six maps of Melbourne on rental stress and mortgages stress in the city.
Samaras charted the spread of median mortgage repayments by year, from 2003, 2011 and 2017. There is no adjustment for inflation "because increases in repayments have outstripped inflation by 200 per cent," the assistant secretary of the ALP wrote. "Repayments have been driven by property price increases."
Concentrations of borrowers in this range are shown in the outer urban belt, while mainly running blood red from the city along fancied arteries.
On rental stress, Samaras draws the map centred on the CBD. Any locale reaching for an inner-city stamp fills an anvil block of the shortest commutes into the city.
The darkest areas exceed A$300 per week in median rent.
"The more inner urban areas now break well over $400," Samaras wrote.
"These same areas also have most tenants paying more than 30 per cent of their weekly earnings on rent. To avoid rental stress in the inner urban areas you need to be a household earning more than $100,000 per year."
The maps draw attention to the Point Cook and Werribee range in the south-west, straddling the Geelong highway, as an epicentre of rental supply and rental stress. The Mornington peninsula is also dense with renters paying over the odds.
"The economic stress that this housing bubble has forced upon people is akin to a recession but it's permanent," Samaras said.