A City Beyond Savings
A surging market, driven by stimulus dollars, has elevated Sydney into the ranks of the world’s most expensive places.
IN LATE JANUARY, I went to an open house at a four-bedroom brick California bungalow in Willoughby, one of Sydney’s quiet, northern suburbs. The house, staged with contemporary Australian-style furniture from a shop that rents it by the week, was attractive but unexceptional: no view, a back yard too small for playing cricket, a narrow pool that wouldn’t allow kids much room to roam, and a main bedroom in a converted attic. The real estate broker told me that he expected the house to sell at auction for about $4.4 million ($3.1 million U.S.). Such an exorbitant price for an otherwise modest house explained my presence there that day, not as an interested buyer but as a reporter investigating a question that preoccupies Sydney residents: why is property so expensive on this huge, isolated, and
