A quaint hotel on Italy’s iconic Lake Como, one of the most glamorous holiday destinations on earth, has hit the market for just $3.3 million, a price tag that will leave Sydney property buyers shaking their heads.
Lake Como, a long-time playground for billionaires, movie stars and luxury fashion houses, continues to attract global hotel brands and high-end tourism investment.
Even smaller boutique properties in its quieter villages, far from full-service resorts, are now in high demand.
At $3.3 million, the listing offers an entire 18-room hotel set against postcard-perfect Italian scenery, the sort of location where guests routinely pay eye-watering nightly rates to stay at properties operating under banners such as Marriott or Ritz-Carlton.
By contrast, back in Sydney, Australia’s most expensive housing market, the median house price now sits north of $1.76 million, and that figure increasingly buys little more than an unremarkable suburban family home.
In many parts of the city, $3.3 million would barely secure a tired fixer-upper on a modest block of land.
In Lake Como, the same money buys a fully functioning hotel in one of the world’s most coveted luxury destinations, a stark reminder of just how distorted Sydney’s property market has become.
By comparison, a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in the inner-west suburb of Concord sold just days ago for $3.3 million, despite its boldly retro, unapologetically old-school interiors steeped in a late-1960s to 1970s aesthetic.
This 18-room hotel in Lake Como (pictured) is on the market for the same amount as a dated three bedroom home in Sydney
This dated three bedroom home in Concord (pictured) sold for $3.3million in a sign of just how little you get in Sydney now
The interior of the 1970s property (pictured) in Concord is dated
The contrast is a dramatic illustration of just how far buyers’ money can stretch overseas, and a stark reminder of Sydney’s deepening affordability crisis as locals increasingly question whether their housing market has lost touch with reality.
The 2025 Demographia International Housing Affordability report ranked Sydney as the world’s second‑most expensive city to buy a home, trailing only Hong Kong and ahead of Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
But the report warned Sydney was on track to overtake Hong Kong this year and become the most expensive housing market on the planet.
In Melbourne, even a humble beach box, little more than a shed by the sand, now commands stratospheric seven‑figure price tags.
The latest beach box to hit the market last month is seeking expressions of interest around $1 million, despite having no power or water supply, and with permanent occupation strictly prohibited.
Last April, another beachfront shack sold for $1 million after a bidding war between five buyers pushed the price $350,000 above initial expectations.
Cotality head of research Gerard Burg said Australian households now need to devote about 45 per cent of their income to service a new mortgage, based on a 30‑year loan as of September 2025.
He said Reserve Bank of Australia data shows the median price‑to‑income ratio for an Australian home sat at about four‑to‑one in 1991. Today, that figure has blown out to 8.2‑to‑one, the highest level on record.
In Melbourne even a humble beach box now comes with a stratospheric seven-figure price tag
Last April, another beachfront shack sold for $1million after a bidding war between five buyers pushed the price $350,000 above initial expectations
‘Today’s challenge is very much directed towards the size of the loan, and by association, the size and time required to save the deposit, reflecting how much faster home values have increased relative to incomes,’ he said.
Mr Burg said some Sydney suburbs had increased ten-fold in price since 1991 including Leichhardt, Strathfield and Auburn which had heavily impacted the pathway to homeownership.
‘Various studies in recent years have shown that the average first home buyer is getting older in Australia,’ he said.
‘This largely reflects the impacts of house prices growing more rapidly than incomes – it takes longer to save a deposit and it is more than likely it requires two incomes to support a typical mortgage.
‘The labour market has also changed, with a larger proportion of jobs being part time or casual than was the case in the early 1990s.’
Home ownership has been steadily declining for decades, with nearly one in three Australians now renting and alarmingly three out of five renters believe they will never afford a home of their own.
Futurologist Rocky Scopelliti said for the first time young Australians are not expecting to live better than their parents – they’re expecting to live smaller.
‘As younger Australians realise they are inheriting both a broken housing market and an ageing fiscal system, the sense of intergenerational inequity is deepening,’ he said.
Futurologist Rocky Scopelliti (pictured) said house prices have fallen in many countries like Japan as birth rates shrink
Aussie Anthony Randall (pictured) has revealed how he was able to buy a house in Japan for just $5,000 after he was locked out of the property market back home
‘That contract is being rewritten, and the next generation wasn’t invited to the table.’
Meanwhile in parts of Europe and countries like Japan, house prices have fallen as birth rates shrink and affordability pressures reduce buyer demand.
NSW man Anthony Randall, 52, believed owning a property in Australia was an ‘unreachable’ goal and decided two years ago to look abroad.
The urban planner from Wollongong found an old abandoned and vacant house – known as an akiya – in the Japanese city of Joetsu.
The property’s stamp duty costs were a mere $2 – paid in cash – and the actual price of the home was just $5,000.
Mr Randall said a declining population has led to an oversupply of housing in Japan, while mass migration of the younger generation from rural to urban areas has also led to millions of properties being left abandoned.
‘It’s really good for the spirit and your wellbeing,’ he said.