High-priced houses do not create wealth, Alan Kohler says, they redistribute it. Now financial success is largely a function of geography, not accomplishmentGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailMy parents were married in 1951 and, with a war service loan, bought a block of land in South Oakleigh, eight miles from Melbourne’s CBD.I don’t know what my dad was making then, but he was a carpenter and apparently the average wage of a carpenter in 1951 was about 80 shillings a week, or £350 a year. And judging by average prices back then, they would have paid about £1,000 for the land. (By the way, the median house price had more than doubled in 1950, recovering the big fall caused by price controls during the second world war, on which more later.) Continue reading...