One in four Australian households now rent their homes in the private rental market. Flexibility and lifestyle are key reasons some choose to rent even if they can afford to buy a home.
The apartment complex in Erskineville, Sydney, that is abandoned due to fears the homes are on contaminated ground.
Joel Carrett/AAP
While governments focus on how to ease congestion and make affordable housing more accessible for workers in our biggest cities, fast rail could be a mixed blessing for regional cities.
The decline in household net wealth over the past 12 months is the third in the past 30 years. The other two were connected to the global financial crisis.
Sam Mooy/AAP
Household wealth in Australia has taken its biggest dive since the global financial crisis. But it’s not all doom and gloom.
Australian cities need to sustain higher levels of construction and to provide higher-density developments to ensure growing populations have access to affordable housing.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Governments should stop offering false hopes and pandering to NIMBY pressures. As well as increased public and private housing supply, growing cities need well-designed higher-density development.
The housing boom increased wealth gains for affluent households while rising housing costs undermined income gains for less affluent households.
Sam Mooy/AAP
Ilan Wiesel, The University of Melbourne; Liss Ralston, Swinburne University of Technology, and Wendy Stone, Swinburne University of Technology
The Productivity Commission neglected the impact of housing costs. After allowing for these costs, the top 10% of households’ average disposable income grew at 2.7 times the rate of the bottom 10%.
Only in the past couple of years has housing construction got close to matching population growth in Sydney and other big cities.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Migrants have similar home ownership rates to the overall population and rely less on public housing. But housing supply shortfalls and higher prices have reduced ownership among recent migrants.
In the past, house building matched high immigration. Construction has increased, particularly in Sydney, but needs to make up the backlog of a decade of undersupply.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Australian governments are faced with a choice: make the difficult decisions to fix planning systems so more houses can be built, or tap the brakes on Australia’s migrant intake.
Concerns about foreign investors driving up housing prices have been growing. Australia was first to bar foreign purchases of existing residential property, but New Zealand is set to go further.
State premiers like Gladys Berejiklian need to have a much sharper policy focus on delivering social and affordable housing.
David Moir/AAP
Yet again the evidence shows supply is no cure-all for affordable housing. All levels of government in Australia need to concentrate on housing for low-income renters in particular.
Most Sydneysiders are concerned about the effects of foreign investment on the local real estate market.
Dave Hunt/AAP
Only 18% of Sydneysiders think foreign investors should be able to buy property. They simply don’t accept arguments that this investment improves housing affordability by increasing supply.
Driven by higher returns on their equity, debt-financed investors are dominating the housing market and shaping its growth.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
New research shows the actual returns on equity for housing investors are higher than most people realise. This helps explain why investors are able to out-compete other home buyers.
Low-cost housing development on the city outskirts can expose owners to higher costs in the long run.
Paul Miller/AAP
People are taking on larger future risks and costs just so they can buy a house. Increases in new home owners are seen as a positive development, but what if they can’t afford the ongoing costs?
The Turnbull government’s line that supply is the key to affordability finds little support among housing experts.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Housing experts writing for The Conversation largely agree on the government policies that are causing negative distortions in the market and the wider economy. And supply is not the key concern.
The financialisation of housing has become central to wealth creation in Australian households.
Andrey_Popov from www.shutterstock.com
We now value the house as a wealth builder, not just a place to live in and raise a family. The result is a distorted investment market that makes home ownership and rental unaffordable.
Without long-term solutions to the imbalance between incomes and house prices, Gen Ys face a lifetime of renting without the financial and emotional security of home ownership.
Crane numbers, in this case in Darlington, Sydney, are an indication of the number of new units coming onto the market.
Francisco Anzola/flickr
We are hearing dire warnings from property interests fighting against changes to negative gearing. But what if Labor’s proposed changes actually support demand for the flood of new properties?
The CBD amenities on which tourism depends struggle to find and keep good workers because of high housing costs.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The hospitality and tourism sector is struggling to find a good supply of lower-paid workers in the CBD, because that is also where they face either high housing or travel costs.