{"id":1587331,"date":"2024-04-03T05:55:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T05:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelwest.com.au\/?p=386206"},"modified":"2024-04-03T05:55:11","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T05:55:11","slug":"snowbirds-and-snakes-how-to-end-the-hunger-games-of-housing-affordability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/03\/snowbirds-and-snakes-how-to-end-the-hunger-games-of-housing-affordability\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowbirds and snakes. How to end the \u2018Hunger Games\u2019 of housing affordability"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Snowbirds<\/div>
<\/div>

In this final instalment of the Housing Hunger Games series, Harry Chemay<\/strong> identifies all policy culprits and all the fixes government can make to deliver more affordable housing for renters and first-home-buyers.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve arrived at the concluding piece in this trilogy on Australia\u2019s housing \u2018Hunger Games\u2019.<\/p>\n

A mismatched duel between renters and hopeful first home buyers on the one side and residential property owners on the other, happiest when interest rates are low and\/or prices are rising.<\/p>\n

How happy? Just released Australian Bureau of Statistics data now sees household balance sheets collectively in excess of $15 trillion<\/a>, of which almost $11 trillion is in \u2018land and dwellings\u2019. If the typical Australian adult now has the second-highest median wealth<\/a> in the world (after Belgium), it\u2019s mostly due to soil, bricks and mortar.<\/p>\n

With Australians stuck in the private rental market for longer, the percentage of renters who become homeowners each year has fallen from 14% in the early 2000s to 10% more recently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The impact of this delay in home ownership is crystalised by the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing (AIHW), an independent statutory Australian Government agency with a remit to maintain health and welfare data.<\/p>\n

The AIHW\u2019s housing data dashboard<\/a> shows the changing rates of homeownership across time.<\/p>\n

It reveals that for elder Millennials (born between 1982 and 1986), only 59% were homeowners when they were aged between 35 and 39.<\/p>\n

By contrast, when they were aged between 35 and 39, some 69% of people born between 1952 and 1956 (the parents of Millennials) were already on the housing ladder.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, this trend results in a larger percentage of the population renting over time, with private market renting rising from under 20% in the early 1990s to over 30% today, while social housing rentals effectively halved over the period.<\/p>\n

\"AIHW

Source: Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing<\/p><\/div>\n

This delay in home ownership may not just be attributable to higher housing costs. Younger people pursuing more education for longer, then partnering and having children later in life<\/a>, all play a part.<\/p>\n

What is trickier to decipher is just how much of that delay is due to needing higher incomes for \u2018adulting\u2019 in the first place, specifically for secure and stable housing.<\/p>\n

Irrespective, the effects will ripple all the way to retirement.<\/p>\n

The Hunger Games of renting. Most liveable cities in the world or dystopian nightmare?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n