Median monthly mortgage repayment explained Place Forecast Feature
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Median monthly mortgage repayment shows the repayment of the household with a mortgage in the middle: half pay less and half pay more. It comes from the Census, so there is a figure for each Census year.
Small-area figures are Place Forecast estimates based on Census data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
It counts every home owned with a mortgage, shared equity purchases included. Homes where the repayment was not stated are left out.
For a council, Place Forecast shows the median the ABS publishes, wherever it publishes one. The ABS works it out from each household's own repayment. With only some dwelling structures selected, or in a Census the ABS published none for, the council's median is worked out from the dollar groups too.
The ABS publishes no median for small areas. It gives their repayments in dollar groups, such as $1,400 to $1,799 a month. Place Forecast finds the group the middle household falls in. Then it places the median in that group as if its repayments were spread evenly. A median in the top group, $4,000 and over, shows that group's lowest repayment.
Where a forecast splits repayments by structure, Place Forecast also gives each structure's median. The ABS publishes no median by structure, so each one is worked out from the dollar groups, for councils as for small areas. A structure's median is shown only where at least 60 households with a mortgage stated their repayment. Not stated has no median of its own, but its homes count in the median of all structures.
A median cannot be added up. So a council's median never comes from its small areas' medians.
No median is shown where fewer than 30 households with a mortgage stated their repayment.
Reading this data fairly
These figures show how people answered Census questions. Here are the equity caveats to keep in mind. They keep the numbers fair:
- The repayments are what households paid in August of each Census year. They are in dollars of the day, not adjusted for inflation. The 2021 figures come from before the interest rate rises that followed.
- A repayment depends on the size of the loan, its rate and how long it has run. So an area where many bought long ago can read lower.
- A repayment does not show income. A high repayment can be easy for one household and hard for another, and some households pay extra to clear the loan sooner. Mortgage affordability compares repayments with income.
See the marker methodology for how these figures are calculated and their limitations.
To see how many households pay each amount, look at housing loan repayments.