Affluent Australians face money misery

Residents in some of Australia’s most esteemed neighbourhoods could see the cash locked up in their homes go up in smoke, a new study finds.

In the Gold Coast suburb of Broadbeach, house prices have shrunk from $2.3 million to $1.36 in less than six months, while residents in Adelaide’s Thorngate have seen the value of their dream home fall to $1.26 million, down from $1.86 million.

Demographer Bernard Salt, a partner at KPMG, said that the “oomph” has been taken out of the top end of the market.

“People just don’t have the means to maintain those expensive lifestyles anymore,” he said, speaking to the Daily Telegraph.

And with financial executives being particularly hard hit, it is possible that the occupational makeup of the country’s richest neighbourhoods could change considerably.

Mr Salt reckons that in the coming years, construction bosses are likely to swap keys with bankers and settle into the nation’s premier real estate.

The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that house prices continued to plummet in December.