Housing bubbles make Sydney/Melbourne residents nation’s wealthiest

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Roy Morgan Research has released its latest personal net wealth rankings, which show that Sydney and Melbourne have gone to the top on the back of soaring housing values:

In the year to December 2007 just prior to the GFC the average net wealth (personal assets minus debt) per capita for Perth, was the highest in Australia at $338k. This was well ahead of Sydney on $292k and Melbourne on $268k who also trailed ACT ($329k) and Country WA ($303k). By March 2019 Sydney was in top place at $570k followed by Melbourne on $491k, Perth had dropped significantly with average net wealth of $358k, 37% behind top ranked Sydney. Country areas in WA also went from being ranked behind only Perth and the ACT in 2007 to near the bottom in 2019…

The following chart shows that in 2007 Perth had the highest per capita net wealth of all major Australian cities with $338k, followed by Sydney ($292k), Melbourne ($268k), Brisbane ($264k), Hobart ($242k) and Adelaide ($223k).

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.