The property market is a Ponzi Scheme though.
How many people are actually buying their first home in Sydney at the median of $1.6 million? And how quickly does your median rise when all the houses on the harbour are also included. The record house price in Sydney is $130 million.
Surely you're moving up the property ladder and contributing your equity from your previous properties to buy a $1.6 million home.
If you compare the Canberra median at the $960k (60% of Sydney, so Sydney is around 1.65 times Canberra), I'd be very surprised also if the same situation wasn't occurring with previous property equity involved. In Canberra you don't have the added issue of the cost of the places around the harbour though. The record price in Canberra is only $9 million, so the record in Sydney is more than 14 times the Canberra record.
The median house price in Australia is $1,125,923, the actual average/median mortgage levels across Australia is only $615,178 (55% of house value, or 45% equity), with an average interest rate of 6.27% p.a, meaning monthly repayments are around $3,800 a month ($45,000 per year) for a 30 year loan.
I'm a single bloke with a mortgage of over $2,600 a month ($31,500 per year), ironically in a house that the mortgage is also 55% of house value/45% equity. I can still travel internationally for over 120 days last year, and I still spent a total of more than $13,000 less than I earnt in the year. I'd do the same this year if my employer let me (have to cut it down around 80 days this year).
So basically, I could afford the average yearly mortgage costs even as a single bloke.