That's not what this statistic means. It means that if you spent 0 dollars and saved all your income you would need 7.27 years to buy a house. In practice you need a mortgage, of course. But now think how bad this gets when a house price is your 40 years worth of income...

As someone else pointed out, these are national averages (Sydney/Melbourne are far higher than this).

It's also a simple measure of income to property price, and not indicative of how long it takes to be pay off a mortgage.

This view is detached from reality. Not every house is in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and lower quartile income in Australia is extremely high.

I could buy a house at the end of a run way for cheap, or in a desert, but no one wants to live there.

There are 80 two bedroom properties for sale right now in the inner west of Sydney that line up to less than 12 years of minimum wage salary at recommended prices.

How much do they cost ?