24610 – APN Asset-Wage Decoupling Index™

The APN Asset-Wage Decoupling Index™ reads how far dwelling prices have moved away from earnings: the number of years of full-time earnings the average Australian dwelling costs. A higher reading means a home costs more years of work.

It is a national time series and the first built component of the APN Net State Position™ (24600).

The index is the mean dwelling price divided by a year of full-time earnings. Earnings are published twice a year, so each release is held until the next: the June and September quarters use May, the December quarter uses November, and the March quarter uses the previous November. No earnings figure is interpolated. The reading is standardised against its 2012–2025 history.

The level stands near the top of its history. The pace at which prices are pulling away from earnings is exactly its 2012–2025 average: prices rose 6.85% over the year to June 2026, earnings 3.67%.

In June 2012 the average dwelling cost 6.98 years of full-time earnings, and the low of the record, 6.84 years, came in December 2012. The ratio rose to 8.46 years by June 2017, eased to 7.64 years in June 2019 as prices fell, and then rose by 2.5 years between June 2020 and March 2022, to 10.24 years. It eased to 9.48 years by March 2023 and has risen since, to a record 10.39 years in March 2026.

The June quarter 2026 reading, 10.16 years, is below that record because the mean dwelling price fell 0.7% in the quarter. Three quarters in the record read higher: March 2022, December 2025 and March 2026.

• Trend. The ratio rises over the window, with a correlation of 0.93 with time, so recent quarters tend to rank high. The trend is part of what the index records; the pace of change, shown above, is the stationary companion measure.
• Held earnings. Earnings are half-yearly and held between releases, so within a half-year the reading moves with prices alone. The 55 quarters of the 2012–2025 baseline therefore rest on 28 independent earnings releases, May 2012 to November 2025, fewer than the quarter count suggests.
• Income concept. Full-time adult ordinary-time earnings are higher than household or median individual income, so the ratio is lower than price-to-income measures built on those bases. Its movement over time is the reading.
• Mean price over the whole stock. The mean covers every dwelling, including land, not only those sold in the quarter. Prices are original terms; earnings are seasonally adjusted.
• Window. The seasonally adjusted earnings series begins in May 2012, so the index begins in the June quarter 2012.

The other components of the APN Net State Position™ (24600).