Today the great Australian dream is owning a home loan (or two)

The two-yearly housing occupancy and cost data released on Friday tell the story of Australian housing over the past 20 years – and it is one of increasing reliance on debt, houses getting bigger and more people renting than ever before.

Twenty years ago, as Australia came out of the 1990s recession, nearly 43% of households lived in a house they owned outright. Just 28% of households were worrying about paying off a mortgage on their home, and renting was done by a minority – barely over a quarter of households:

In 2013-14, however, there were almost as many households renting as there were who owned their house outright.

The history of home ownership over the past 20 years has been one of decline and increase – decline in the overall percentage of households who are home owners and an increase in the percentage who are paying off a mortgage.

In 2013-14, 36% of households had a mortgage on the home they lived in, down slightly from 37% in 2011-12, but still well above the number observed a generation ago.

Twenty years ago, 71.4% of households either owned their house outright or were paying off a mortgage; now it is down to 67.2%. Had the level of home ownership stayed the same in 2013-14 there would have been around 370,000 more households who owned their home rather than renting.

Of course over that time, as has been written about many times, the price of home ownership has risen. The ABS’s housing costs, however, don’t take into account the cost of purchase – only the mortgage repayment and other regular costs such as rates.

On this measure, costs rose steeply from 2000 until the GFC, but since then they have steadied due to falling interest rates. In effect, the rising house prices which have led to larger mortgages have been counteracted by lower interest rates which have kept the monthly repayments steady:

For renters, however, the average cost has continued to rise.

But it is when we look at these housing costs as a percentage of household income that the real benefits of lower interest rates are highlighted:

Back in 1995, when the standard variable home loan rate was 10.5% – almost double the current rate of 5.45% – weekly housing costs for mortgage holders equated to 19% of average household income. But in 2013-14, the costs were just 16%.

However, rent has equated to around 20% of the average weekly income of a renting household steadily over the past 20 years.

But this figure is a bit misleading. Because the proportion of Australians renting has increased, so too has the average income of those households – which thus reduces the cost per income of renting.

A comparison of the cost of renting versus that of home owning over the past 20 years shows that renting costs since the GFC have increased by much more than housing costs:

When we break down costs by location, somewhat surprisingly, Sydney is not the most expensive. The ACT has the highest average weekly housing costs for those with a mortgage (and those who own their house outright):

For renters though, Darwin comes in first – reflecting the location and supply – with Sydney coming in second.

But when we look at housing costs as a percentage of household income, Brisbane comes in as the most expensive place to live on average. In the Queensland capital, average housing costs of a mortgage holder account for 18% of household income, compared with just 16% in Sydney. This reflects that, while Sydney’s average weekly housing costs are $520 compared with the Brisbane average of $472, the average gross household weekly income of a homeowner in Sydney is around $600 a week more:

For renters, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart are tied – with the average cost for renters in those cities being equivalent to 21% of those households’ weekly incomes.

Hobart, however, is the place where you are most likely to know someone who has paid off their home. 33% of households in Hobart have paid off the mortgage on the house they live in – above the average of 30% for all capital cities. The figure is lowest in Darwin, where just 18% are neither borrowers nor renters:

Perth and the ACT have the greatest share of households paying off their mortgage, and the ACT also has the highest percentage of public-housing renters.

Darwin, Brisbane and Sydney are the top three cities for renters.

Perhaps linked with the rising housing costs is also the change in the size of our houses. In 2013-14, there was a record high average number of bedrooms per household at 3.14:

 

This meant there were 1.212 persons per bedroom – just touch below the record set in 2005-06 of 1.219.

Nearly 45% of all households had two or more bedrooms spare – but a whopping 66% of households who had paid off their mortgage had two or more spare bedrooms, around 1.8m households.

Such a statistic certainly gives support to those who argue one reason for shortages of housing is people staying in their family home long after the children have left and perhaps long after the need for such a big house is required.

One reason also for the rise in the number of renters is the number of people investing in homes. 17% of households – around 1.5m households – own a property other than the one they live in. So lucrative has the investor game become, due to negative gearing and discounted capital gains tax, that 17% of all such investor households are renters and don’t even own their own home.

Investing is also a rich person’s game – the richest 20% of households account for 39% of all housing investors.

Over the past 20 years, owning your house outright has gone from almost being the norm to now being almost less likely than renting. The great Australian dream of owning your own home may still be there, but for more Australians than ever the reality of the dream is less about owning a house than owing money on a mortgage – and for some – owing money on more than one.