More Home ownership rates continue to plunge, housing stress widespread: Census

Census reveals continued home ownership plunge

Home ownership rates in Australia have continued to decline as prices soar, with more people living in rentals and many owners and renters in housing stress.

Mortgage stress highest in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne
Not only are an increasing number of households being driven away from ownership by the rising cost of purchasing - on average, capital city home prices jumped 35 per cent in the five years between the 2011 and 2016 census - but a growing proportion are in housing stress.

A common yardstick of housing stress is whether households are spending more than 30 per cent of their monthly income on either rent or mortgage repayments.

The census reveals that 22 per cent of Sydney households are in such a situation and, given the proportion of households that have finished paying off their mortgage, it means that almost a third of Sydneysiders who do not already own their home outright are under housing stress.

The census also offers clues as to the role immigration has played in surging capital city home prices, with 86 per cent of migrants arriving over the past 25 years settling in the capital cities, leading to a population growth rate (10.5 per cent over the past five years) twice as fast as the rest of the country.

Darwin and Perth had the steepest population growth (13.5 and 12.4 per cent), with Melbourne just behind at 12.1 per cent meaning that it remains on track to eventually overtake Sydney as the nation's most populous city.

However, despite the large rise in home prices in some of the nation's key population centres, an increasing number of homes are being left empty.

The data reveal that 11.2 per cent of dwellings - or about 1.04 million homes - were unoccupied on census night, up from 10.7 per cent in 2011.

While many of these vacant dwellings are holiday houses, under renovation or simply temporarily vacant while their occupants are travelling, the rise in the proportion of empty homes may hint at more investment properties being deliberately left unoccupied.

 

I like stats though I wish they put the data side by side for 2011 and 2016 so they're easy to compare rather than trying to grab the data one by one from the ABS :-\

2016 Census QuickStats: Greater Darwin
2011 Census data

This is for the unoccupied private dwellings %. All except one experienced an increase in vacancy. Perth and Darwin has the highest % increase.

 

? I wonder which city data they use

Mortgage monthly repayment are 30% or greater of household income. Based on monthly mortgage repayment >30% this number has actually improved across the board. i.e. less proportion people are paying mortgage beyond their affordability



Weekly rent payment in the other way around.
Weekly where rent repayments are 30% or greater of household income

 

The housing Tenures

Decrease in Owned (both outright and with mortgage) across most cities except Perth and Adelaide.

Would be interesting to see if there're changes in the compositions of who own and rent. i.e. a decrease in home ownership % can be due to less people buying house, or can be due to increase of # from certain group, e.g, maybe most migrants rent? This will increase the total number and decreasing percentage of other groups.

 

@petewargent has a different take on this:

"If households were truly experiencing financial stress in aggregate, then debt consolidation and refinancing would likely be trending upwards, yet Commsec's analysis showed that as a share of finance commitments these segments are now tracking at the lowest level since the beginning of the century."​

I agree with his conclusion...

"Maybe it's time for commentary to reflect a bit more of these facts, rather than fitting the prevailing narrative..."​

Worth a read: Pete Wargent Daily Blog: Some more upbeat stats on household finances