Affordability vs commute time

[BuildingBlocks]

What would you consider a reasonable travel time to get to\from work and which city are you in?

At what point does the housing affordability argument become unreasonable due to the expectation of extreme travel time?

I have only ever lived in Sydney, so have a very one sided view to travel time.

My travel time for various workplaces has been 20-40mins, but it would seem from my co-workers that I am in the very lucky category and that most are up for closer an hour, some much more. We have people coming down from the Central Coast each day who are up for at least 1.5hrs each way, double that if there is a crash on the F3!

Is it reasonable for a first home buyer to expect to afford to buy within an hour commute of their workplace?

 

[BV]

Is it reasonable for a first home buyer to expect to afford to buy within an hour commute of their workplace?

In the city up to 1 hour is doable
It is reasonable and they can, there are plenty of affordable units.
The problem is often the buyer.
They want to buy in areas and properties they can't afford.
It is the attitude of a lot of people these days where we want everything and we want it now.

 

[twobobsworth]

Previously traveled into Sydney CBD from the Hills area before the lane cove tunnel was built. 1 - 1.50 hours would not be uncommon.

Now only have about 10 minutes travel time tops.

I don't think it's unreasonable for anyone to commute from where they have to, if they want/or have to live in a specific location.

 

[greedy2000]

My rule of thumb for adelaide is, if you can travel at a speed limit more than 60 kph to get to the city and back you live to far away.

works pretty well for adelaide.

 

[dan c]

When I was interviewing in London a few years ago, the HR man asked me how long I would be prepared to travel to get a to work. Not wanting to give a hard and fast figure, he then asked me what my usual communte was back home in Adelaide.

I said, "Ten minutes".

He nearly fell off his chair. "I hope your prepared for a commute of more than ten minutes here".

My commute in London was about an hour, including a 15 minute walk to get to the train station.

We are spoilt here in Adelaide, but if you can't get to work in an hour, maybe an hour 20, then it's time for either a new house or a new job.

My commute now is about 20 minutes, soon to become shorter.

 

[Edmond Dantes]

In the city up to 1 hour is doable
It is reasonable and they can, there are plenty of affordable units.
The problem is often the buyer.
They want to buy in areas and properties they can't afford.
It is the attitude of a lot of people these days where we want everything and we want it now.

Agree... i could only afford a townhouse, but my only condition was walking distance to train station. My.commute now is 1 hr door to door. Get yourself a nice book and it's not that bad. At least i never have to drive!

 

[Dazz]

At what point does the housing affordability argument become unreasonable due to the expectation of extreme travel time?

There are no excuses. Nothing is unreasonable if you wish to get ahead.

• Travel time - pffft.
• Work hours - pffft.
• Weekend completely consumed - pffft.
• Bugger all sleep 3 nights in a row - boohoo.
• Can't afford a nice car - so what.
• Haven't been to a restaurant in 6 months - consider yourself lucky.
• Need to load up on a part time study course as well - get on with it.
• Hurdles that Banks set keep getting higher - take a bigger run up.

Whatever it takes....


People keep putting all these false limitations on themselves for the end result that they get to sit on their @$$ a bit longer and relax. Yeah, like that's gonna help in a dog-eat-dog world. The only people who are complaining are the dogs being eaten. The winners just keep on chomping.

 

[silverx]

There are no excuses. Nothing is unreasonable if you wish to get ahead.

• Travel time - pffft.
• Work hours - pffft.
• Weekend completely consumed - pffft.
• Bugger all sleep 3 nights in a row - boohoo.
• Can't afford a nice car - so what.
• Haven't been to a restaurant in 6 months - consider yourself lucky.
• Need to load up on a part time study course as well - get on with it.
• Hurdles that Banks set keep getting higher - take a bigger run up.

Whatever it takes....


People keep putting all these false limitations on themselves for the end result that they get to sit on their @$$ a bit longer and relax. Yeah, like that's gonna help in a dog-eat-dog world. The only people who are complaining are the dogs being eaten. The winners just keep on chomping.

heheeh you sound like charlie sheen

 

[The Y-man]

It would be a 1.5 hours commute door to door each way from our place to the CBD.

 

[joanmc]

we have always lived at least a 1 hour commute from work for over 20 years.

 

[Corey Batt]

1 hour max. I currently live 10 mins from work, 35 min drive to city no traffic.

This is as far as I want to live from CBD in Adelaide. Anything more is cutting down personal time, which may as well have been overtime at a workplace closer to home.

 

[Aaron Sice]

geezus.

any more than 20 mins in the car i start look for another job, that's 40 minutes of my day just *poof!* never to get back chasing other people's tails.

no thanks. i might live at the end of the earth, but my office is there as well.

 

[tom32]

You have struck onto an extremely important thing around house prices in my opinion.

The amenity of new homes v existing is what drives house prices in my opinion. Sure credit can fuel higher prices but long term governments investing in good infrastructure and competant planning can create cities with much larger populations than ours with much higher amenity.

It might be a pipe dream of mine but personally I think it can be done. In Australia we are too easily bribed into thinking our governments are doing good.

nearly 20bn on school halls, nearly 20bn on cash handouts, over 40bn on a high speed broadband.

thats 80bn, or 20bn for Sydney and Melbourne and 10bn for our other capitals. Thats three fast trains per city which could come from well out of the city into it freeing up hobby farms to use more intensively as residential and commercial centres.

But we would all rather get $1000.00 dollars in the pocket and broadband access to save us having to drive to the video store to get videos.

The Greens are ****ing this country and we have to come to terms with it or we will become a basket case should this mining boom ever end. We are not investing in anything substantial.

 

[bene313]

any more than 20 mins in the car i start look for another job, that's 40 minutes of my day just *poof!* never to get back chasing other people's tails.

Sitting in the car for a couple of hours per day commute can take years off your life.

It takes me 15-20 minutes to drive to work in peak hour. 30 minutes if I ride my bike. Wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Aaron Sice]

Sitting in the car for a couple of hours per day commute can take years off your life.

It takes me 15-20 minutes to drive to work in peak hour. 30 minutes if I ride my bike. Wouldn't have it any other way.

amen.

hallelujah.

amen.

 

[BayView]

Simple solution to commute;

Find job not in CBD, live near job..

If no job available outside of CBD in your profession; change profession to one which allows work in other areas of Country other than CBD.

If you can only think in terms of CBD.....your fault.

Is it hard to change professions? Some say yes.

Is it doable? of course.

Most won't even contemplate it, and whine about their life.

 

[Cdro]

I used to live in Sydney and my commute time was about 30 -45 minutes. I didn't mind because my start / finish times were quite flexible.

I think "reasonable" is all about expectations. Reasonable for one person might not be reasonable for another. Same with affordability - it's all about expectations.

But I do find the all the hype about affordability interesting. Imagine this: one day, we all wake up and unanimously agree that housing is not affordable and that is terrible. What would happen then? Prices wouldn't just drop just because we all want them to. Some things just are as they are and we're better off accepting reality. Once we accept things for what they are, we are free to decide from the options in front of us, even if there isn't a perfect choice. I could wait for perfection, but I'm just not that patient!

 

[The Y-man]

It takes me 15-20 minutes to drive to work in peak hour. 30 minutes if I ride my bike.

For a while there I was thinking "what the...???" but then realised you were talking the manual kind ......

The Y-man

 

[VYBerlinaV8]

Takes me about 20mins usually. Just enough time to enjoy some music and think about the day.

 

[Belbo]

There are no excuses. Nothing is unreasonable if you wish to get ahead.

• Travel time - pffft.
• Work hours - pffft.
• Weekend completely consumed - pffft.
• Bugger all sleep 3 nights in a row - boohoo.
• Can't afford a nice car - so what.
• Haven't been to a restaurant in 6 months - consider yourself lucky.
• Need to load up on a part time study course as well - get on with it.
• Hurdles that Banks set keep getting higher - take a bigger run up.

Whatever it takes....


People keep putting all these false limitations on themselves for the end result that they get to sit on their @$$ a bit longer and relax. Yeah, like that's gonna help in a dog-eat-dog world. The only people who are complaining are the dogs being eaten. The winners just keep on chomping.

Couldn't agree more!

But can I add, it's not even that the the winners are chomping, they're just getting on with making a go of it. Plenty of them get chomped to pieces by bigger dogs in other fields. Making a go of it is what transitions ordinary people from losers to winners, but it's the smarts they get along the way - or not - that will keep them there. It's truly a dog-eat-dog world, yes, but the smartest dogs don't start out winners. The smartest ones (think of Frank Lowy, for example) came from nothing.