Outcomes of home ownership aspirations and their determinants

Summary

Australians continue to aspire to home-ownership but less than one third of those for whom buying a home was an important short-term goal were able to achieve it within 3 years.

Project Number: 10016
Research Theme: Housing Markets
Project Leader: McDonald, Peter
Funding Year: 2000
Research Centre: ANU

Description

Aspirations are easily expressed in social surveys but rarely evaluated as such evaluation requires access to longitudinal panel data. Prior analysis of housing aspirations in Australia has been based upon questions in single-round surveys and so the reliability of these aspirations as predictors of behaviour is questionable. Research on housing aspirations has important consequences for industry and government policy, as identified in AHURI's Research Agenda 2000. However, policy and industry responses should not be based on reported aspirations without having confidence in those aspirations.

This project provided information to assess the extent to which policy and industry responses should be based on people's reported housing aspirations. In particular, this project aimed to evaluate the utility of housing aspirations as a concept in social and housing preferences surveys by analysing the home ownership aspirations of panel respondents to the Negotiating the Life Course survey. The project has also provided an overview of housing aspirations of Australians by examining publicly-available data such as the National Housing Strategy's Housing and Locational Choice Survey (1991) and the Australian National University's Australian Family Project Survey (1986) and past research, and has also defined gaps in information about housing aspirations.

More Information

Final Report: No. 009: Outcomes of home-ownership aspirations and their determinants
125 KB PDF Document

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