Cost of living
There was something for everyone in the ABS housing occupancy figures for 2017-18 this week.
Home ownership rates were still high in international terms at 66 per cent, but were down from 68 per cent in 2015-16.
In 1997-98 the home ownership rate was as high as 70 per cent.
Over that time the share of homes owned outright also declined from 40 per cent to 30 per cent.
The figures were a bit contradictory, in some cases showing very little movement in median rents over the past decade.
More than three quarters of us still pay less than 25 per cent of our gross income towards housing costs, and in 2017-18 there was a small improvement in those paying 30 per cent or above.
What is clear, though, is that there are more renters, while more Boomers are seemingly taking a bit of debt into their later years, resulting in fewer homes owned outright.
We'd probably expect to see more mortgaged homes and renters going forward, too, if Australia continues to pursue the high immigration/high population growth path.
On the other hand there's been a significant affordability dividend for existing homeowners, with mortgaged owners seeing their housing costs at multi-decade lows as a proportion of their income (even before the recent rate cuts and double-digit housing correction).
Note that these are averages, and may be distorted lower by, for example, older owners borrowing equity.
Note that these are averages, and may be distorted lower by, for example, older owners borrowing equity.
The lowest housing costs as a proportion of income for mortgaged owners? Sydney at 14 per cent.
And the highest? Melbourne at 16.9 per cent.
I'd thought that we might see the median number of households per dwelling come down with all the high-rise units going up, but instead that number was steady at 3.2 (a huge share of households have more bedrooms than they need).
The median number of persons per dwelling also stabilised at 2.6.
One inescapable conclusion from the stats is that for low income households housing costs chew up a high proportion of income, making it tough for this cohort to get ahead.
A fifth of households owner more property other than where they live, but most only owned one additional dwelling.
Only 5 per cent owned four or more properties.
