Sure, prices have fallen, but we have a decade of absurd growth to undo to make housing affordable

While house prices have fallen in the past year, they are much higher than three years ago. This means housing affordability remains worse than it was before the pandemic. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

House prices are falling and interest rates are a chance to no longer be rising. Life moves pretty fast in the housing market, except when it comes to affordability, which over the past year has only very slowly and very marginally improved.

Two weeks ago you would have been able to sit back and sagely tell listeners that the Reserve Bank of Australia was going to increase the cash rate at least three times – first to the current rate of 3.6% and then to keep going all the way up to 4.35%.