As the Reserve Bank ponders yet another cut in the official cash rate, the issue of home ownership has made headlines following the release of the largest household survey ever conducted.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Report, or HILDA for short, surveyed 17,000 Australians.
The report, written by Professor Roger Wilkins from the University of Melbourne, collected data as far back as 2001 up until 2014. Arguably one of it’s most disturbing findings was that the number of owner-occupied homes declined by 3.5 percentage points over that period.
At the same time, investment property ownership jumped 4 per cent. Between 2002 and 2014, the humber of households owning invesment properties increased by 17 per cent to 21 per cent.
In other words, the great Australian dream of owning your own home looks further out of reach than ever before.
According to the report, by 2017, less than 50 per cent of all Australians will own their own home. There was a time a certain portion of the population rented a home by choice. It now appears that a large number are renting because they simply cannot afford to enter the market themselves.
Tasmania is relatively protected from the types of housing prices we see on the mainland, particularly those in Melbourne and Sydney.
In April, the median house price in Sydney was a staggering $995,804. In Melbourne, that figure was just over $725,000, while in Brisbane it was just over $510,000.
In comparison, Hobart's median house price was $360,212, making Tasmania the most affordable place to buy a home.
Admittedly, our average weekly wage is considerably lower than in most mainland centres. Even so, imagine trying to pay a three-quarter-of-a-million-dollar mortgage on your current wage. Lower median house prices in Tasmania, however, were offset by the fact we also boasted the lowest level of household wealth.
In 2014, the median household wealth for a Tasmanian was $328,801. This compares poorly with Canberra ($773,451) or Western Australia ($564,058) but almost on par with Queensland ($373,701) and South Australia ($387,377).
That alone makes Tasmania an enviable proposition in terms of pure livability compared with most states. But then again, most Tasmanians already knew that.
