Briefs

Amidst concerns about rising energy costs for Australian households, a look at AHURI research published in 2010 brings to light interesting differences between the energy expenditure of home owners and renters. The report, which examined 2006 HILDA data, found that on average, home owners spent more on energy running costs than households renting a similar size home in the private rental market.

In the UK, government ‘Rent to buy’ programs are ways to help lower income households to afford to buy a home. In Australia ‘Rent to buy’ contracts offered by private vendors are very different arrangements and have even been banned by one state.

Written in consultation with Professor Graeme Cooper and Manuel Makas, Director and Head of Real Estate at Greenwoods & Herbert Smith Freehills. In the May 2017 Budget, the Federal Government introduced a tax measure to ‘stimulate affordable housing through Managed Investment Trusts’, but just what does the proposal offer?

For an Australian household to be recorded as being in housing affordability stress (HAS) it has to be in the bottom 40 per cent of Australia’s income distribution and have housing costs that are greater than 30 per cent of its income. So what can the Census tell us about the incomes and thresholds of HAS for households in the first (Q1) and second (Q2) quintile (i.e. in the 0% to 20% range and the 21% to 40% range) of Australia’s income distribution?

The recent decision by the Victorian State Government to allow the maximum length of residential tenancy agreements to be longer than 5 years raises the question; when it comes to the length of rental leases, how do Australia’s States and Territories compare, and what impact does extending the maximum length have on the take up of longer-term leases?