Briefs

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?

AHURI research that examined housing supply responsiveness across Australia, reveals that approvals for lower priced houses were a small percentage of all building approvals in 2005–06 and again in 2013–14, with the vast majority of approvals (82.8% in 2013–14) in the 6th to 9th deciles (i.e. the measure of the distribution of house prices), a range covering houses prices of between $306,000 and $795,000.

The 2016 Census shows a continuing fall in the proportion of Australian households who live in social housing, from a high point of over 7 per cent of all households in 1991 to 4.2 per cent in 2016 (which is the lowest proportion of households in social housing during the last 35 years).

The 2016 Census reveals the proportion of home owners (i.e. those who either owned their home outright or were still buying) dropped from 68.6 per cent of all households in 1991 to 65.5 per cent in 2016. The biggest change during this time period was a fall of 10 percentage points in outright home owners between 1991 and 2016, and an increase of nearly 7 percentage points in the proportion of households paying off their mortgage.

High house prices (particularly in Sydney and Melbourne) have led to calls for the easing of supply-side restrictions such as opening up more land for development and speeding up the planning approval process. But will increasing the supply of new homes lead to more affordable housing for low-income households?