Housing Affordability

The impact on young Australians who are interested in buying a home of their own has been very significant. Australia's housing affordability now shapes the typical housing cycle or housing career as some people call it. Most Australians in the normal course of events are people who move through the housing cycle in a way that matches the stages of life that they're at. So, they move out of the family home in their late teens or early twenties as they gain their independence from their families, then they rent to save for a home they can afford as either a group or maybe a couple. And maybe they can upgrade it when they have a family in their middle age.They are more than likely to have paid off their mortgage. And that means they have housing security in their old age. That's no longer the typical housing cycle for Australians.Young people generally live at home for much longer than they once did. They generally rent for longer and they're more likely to be saddled with a mortgage not just into their middle age but more often than not into their retirement as well. In fact, in 2006, 65,000 retiree households were still paying off the mortgage. Affordable rent is also an elusive right around Australia. We have very low rental vacancies, we see high turnover as landlords want to maximise their profits in a tight market, and we see less long-term or lifelong rental, as we see in other countries and other economies.