Why Saving $5,000 a Year Won't Get You Into the Property Market

You're putting money away every month. You're skipping holidays, cooking at home, cutting the subscriptions. And somehow the deposit still feels impossibly far away.

Here's why: the numbers haven't kept up with the market for a long time, and in 2026, the gap is wider than it has ever been.

This isn't about spending habits or financial discipline. It's about a structural problem that's reshaping how a generation of Australians thinks about property ownership.

The Maths That Most People Haven't Done

Saving $5,000 a year sounds responsible. Over five years, that's $25,000 set aside. A real effort.

But let's look at what a deposit actually costs right now.

According to the latest first home buyer research, entry-level house prices have risen in every capital city. In Sydney, an entry-level house now sits at around $1.15 million. In Brisbane, prices have surged more than 20% in the past year alone. Perth and Adelaide have followed a similar trajectory.

A 20% deposit on a $750,000 property is $150,000. At $5,000 a year, that's 30 years of saving. By which point the property won't be $750,000.

Even a 10% deposit on the same property is $75,000. Fifteen years of saving $5,000 a year, assuming prices stay completely flat, which they won't.

The report found that over the past five years, entry-level house prices nationally have risen 68%, while wages have grown just 21%. Saving harder doesn't solve a structural gap that wide.

How Long It Actually Takes

Domain calculated the time it takes for a couple aged 25 to 34, earning average wages, to save a 20% deposit on an entry-level property. The results are confronting.

In Sydney, it's seven years and seven months for a house. Brisbane has overtaken Sydney for units, now requiring more saving time than any other capital city for that property type. Perth and Adelaide, which many buyers have turned to as more affordable alternatives, have seen some of the sharpest deteriorations in affordability over the past year.

Nationally, the average saving time sits at around five years for an entry-level home. That figure assumes rents stay stable, income stays consistent, and life doesn't throw anything unexpected at you for half a decade.

For most Australians, those assumptions don't hold.

How Long Will It Take to Save a Deposit in Sydney?

Savings rate assumptions:

• Optimistic: saving 20% of gross annual income
• Realistic: saving 10% of gross annual income (after rent and living costs)

How Long Will It Take to Save a Deposit in Sydney?

Savings rate assumptions:

• Optimistic: saving 20% of gross annual income
• Realistic: saving 10% of gross annual income (after rent and living costs)

$1,000,000 Property

$1,500,000 Property

$2,000,000 Property

Each cell shows optimistic (20% savings rate) / realistic (10% savings rate). Years are approximate and assume no interest on savings, stable income, and no change in property prices.

Rent Is the Hidden Variable

What makes the maths even harder is that saving for a deposit doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens while paying rent.

Renters now spend a record 33.4% of their income on housing, according to PropTrack's 2026 Housing Affordability Report. That's before groceries, transport, utilities, or anything else. What's left for saving is often much less than people estimate when they set their deposit targets.

This creates its own trap. The longer it takes to save, the longer you're renting. The longer you're renting, the more of your income goes to a landlord instead of a deposit. And if rents keep rising while you're saving, which in most Australian capital cities they are, the cycle becomes very difficult to break.

It's not a willpower problem. It's a maths problem.

The 20% Rule Is Also Worth Questioning

Most people default to saving a 20% deposit because it avoids lenders mortgage insurance. That logic made more sense when property prices were lower and the gap between a 10 and 20% deposit was smaller in dollar terms.

At today's entry-level prices, insisting on 20% can mean years of additional saving in a rising market. By the time you reach 20%, the property you were targeting may have moved well beyond what your deposit can cover.

A 10% deposit, or even less through certain government schemes, gets you into the market sooner. The cost of LMI can be significant, but for many buyers it's worth comparing that cost against the cost of waiting in a market that keeps moving.

What Actually Moves the Timeline

There are a few levers that genuinely change the deposit equation.

Government schemes worth knowing about

The federal government's Help to Buy scheme supports eligible buyers with incomes up to $100,000 by co-contributing to the purchase. The First Home Guarantee allows eligible buyers to purchase with a 5% deposit without paying lenders mortgage insurance. Both have eligibility requirements and limited places, but they're worth understanding before assuming the full deposit burden falls entirely on you.

State-based stamp duty concessions for first home buyers also vary significantly and can meaningfully reduce upfront costs.

Off-the-plan with a staged deposit

Buying off-the-plan gives buyers time on their side. Because settlement typically happens 12 to 24 months after signing contracts, buyers can continue saving while the development is under construction.

Through Coposit, eligible off-the-plan properties can be secured with minimum of $10,000 upfront, with the remaining deposit spread across manageable weekly instalments during the build period. Rather than needing tens of thousands of dollars available immediately, buyers can lock in a purchase and build towards settlement over time.

For buyers who are close but not quite there, this structure removes the all-or-nothing pressure of the traditional deposit model.

Explore eligible developments across Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and the Gold Coast through our project listings, or browse them anytime in the Coposit app.

Buying as a couple or with a guarantor

Combined incomes change the saving timeline significantly. Two people saving together on average wages can reach a deposit in roughly half the time. A family guarantee, where a parent uses equity in their own home to support a loan, is another pathway some first home buyers explore -- though it comes with its own considerations and should always involve independent legal and financial advice.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Waiting

Recent housing affordability research shows that fewer than 15% of median-income households can currently afford to buy the median-priced home nationally. In Sydney, that figure is even lower.

Waiting for the market to become more affordable is a reasonable hope. But it's worth being honest about the conditions that would need to change for that to happen, sustained price falls, significant wage growth, or major increases in housing supply, and how likely those conditions are in the near term.

For many buyers, the more productive question isn't how to save more. It's how to enter the market sooner, with the resources they have now, using a structure that fits their actual financial situation rather than an idealised one.

*Coposit helps buyers get into new developments sooner by spreading the deposit over time. To explore eligible properties or learn how it works, download our app or contact our team. *