A brief look at how property tenure has changed over the last 25 years.
If Sydney was a city of 100 homes, here’s what it would look like
Sydney is a sprawling city, with 4.82 million people living in 1.86 million properties, according to the latest official count for the 2016 census.
With so many properties across the city, it can be difficult to grasp just quite what the harbour city looks like, where the average home is and who is living in them.
But if we shrunk Sydney to a city of 100 homes, keeping its proportions the same, here’s what it would look like.
Sydney is a vast city, but when you look closely the average Sydneysider still lives in a house, with their family, usually in the western suburbs. Photo: Mark Merton
What we live in
There’s an average 2.8 people in each home in our town, meaning we have a population of 280 people.
The majority of people in our tiny town still live in detached houses – with 57 homes in this category. That’s down from 61 homes in 2011.
About 28 of the homes would be apartments, while 14 would be semi-detached, row or townhouses, predominantly in the inner- and middle-rings.
In our small town, 34 of the homes have three bedrooms, while 31 have four. A quarter of homes have two bedrooms, while seven homes have just one bedroom.
Fairfield has the most people per home – at 3.3 – while North Sydney and the City of Sydney have the least – with two people per home.
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The oldest households are in Hunters Hill – where the median age is 43 – and the youngest is Cumberland, City of Sydney and Strathfield where the median age is 32.
Where we live
Let’s exclude the Blue Mountains and the Central Coast for simplicity.
Out of 100 homes, 24 – or about a quarter of our fictitious town – are in the western suburbs. A further 21 are in the south-west, the same amount as the lower and upper north combined.
Eight homes are in the inner west, while the south, inner city, and the east have seven each.
Five are in the north-west.
On average, each council area would have three homes – but some would have twice as many, such as Blacktown, Canterbury Bankstown and the City of Sydney, which each have seven.
Seven areas would have just one home in them – predominantly higher priced LGAs in the lower north and east – while Hunters Hill would have zero.
Who owns and who rents
Across Greater Sydney, 34 of the homes would be lived in by renters. Another 33 of the homes are owned with a mortgage. And 29 are owned outright.
The remaining handful would include other tenure arrangements.
Families are still the most dominant households, with 74 homes being a family, 22 are single people and five are group households. On average, each home has 2.8 people in it.
About eight homes are empty.
Note: Some totals may add up to just above or below 100 due to rounding.
