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Home ownership fall to pressure welfare
JONATHAN CHANCELLOR
September 20, 2010
Australia will have to get used to being a country with lower home ownership rates among retirees who will make greater demands on the public purse for rental assistance.
People over 65 in Sydney now enjoy an 82 per cent ownership rate, but the proportion of lower-middle income households in Sydney without their own home rose from 26 per cent to 40 per cent in the 45-to-64 age group between 1986 and 2006.
''The substantial loss of home ownership by this age group was concentrated where it is likely to have the worst welfare outcomes as the group ages,'' an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute study reported.
''They can expect a very long period of private rental under reduced circumstances.''
The government deregulation of finance in the 1980s with no corresponding deregulation of planning was significantly to blame, along with a shift in marital status demographics. Sole parents have very low ownership rates.
''The country that promised limitless land, cheap housing and near-universal home ownership to allcomers now has some of the most expensive housing in the world,'' says a Flinders University housing economist, Joe Flood.
''The postwar policy apparatus that caused the ownership rate to lift for middle Australia has been discarded, as part of the neo-liberal makeover of the economy, and home ownership rates have returned to their market-determined level,'' according to the research report. ''Piecemeal deregulation has created a dangerous and unstable situation.''
Home ownership had also fallen in the key 25-44 middle-income age group which has traditionally had high ownership aspirations.
In 1986, about 60 per cent of middle-income households headed by people aged 25 to 44 owned their own home. By 2006 about 45 per cent were home owners.
There were now 217, 000 fewer Sydney home-owning households in the 25-to-64 age group than if the tenure incidence levels of 1986 had been preserved.
Sydney's overall home ownership rate sat at 67.2 per cent in 2006, down on the 70.3 per cent level in 1986.
The report concluded the benefit of higher household incomes between 1998-2007 went into pushing up house prices and debt rather than improving home ownership equity or increasing the stock of housing.
JONATHAN CHANCELLOR
September 20, 2010
Australia will have to get used to being a country with lower home ownership rates among retirees who will make greater demands on the public purse for rental assistance.
People over 65 in Sydney now enjoy an 82 per cent ownership rate, but the proportion of lower-middle income households in Sydney without their own home rose from 26 per cent to 40 per cent in the 45-to-64 age group between 1986 and 2006.
''The substantial loss of home ownership by this age group was concentrated where it is likely to have the worst welfare outcomes as the group ages,'' an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute study reported.
''They can expect a very long period of private rental under reduced circumstances.''
The government deregulation of finance in the 1980s with no corresponding deregulation of planning was significantly to blame, along with a shift in marital status demographics. Sole parents have very low ownership rates.
''The country that promised limitless land, cheap housing and near-universal home ownership to allcomers now has some of the most expensive housing in the world,'' says a Flinders University housing economist, Joe Flood.
''The postwar policy apparatus that caused the ownership rate to lift for middle Australia has been discarded, as part of the neo-liberal makeover of the economy, and home ownership rates have returned to their market-determined level,'' according to the research report. ''Piecemeal deregulation has created a dangerous and unstable situation.''
Home ownership had also fallen in the key 25-44 middle-income age group which has traditionally had high ownership aspirations.
In 1986, about 60 per cent of middle-income households headed by people aged 25 to 44 owned their own home. By 2006 about 45 per cent were home owners.
There were now 217, 000 fewer Sydney home-owning households in the 25-to-64 age group than if the tenure incidence levels of 1986 had been preserved.
Sydney's overall home ownership rate sat at 67.2 per cent in 2006, down on the 70.3 per cent level in 1986.
The report concluded the benefit of higher household incomes between 1998-2007 went into pushing up house prices and debt rather than improving home ownership equity or increasing the stock of housing.
