This research examines the growth of home ownership and its tenure dominance in Australia post World War II. It builds a statistical analysis of Australian ownership trends, most notably for younger households (ages 25–34 and 35–44), over the last four decades and presents a comparative analysis of ownership trends for equivalent countries.

Australia’s overall home ownership rate is projected to decline to around 63 per cent for all households by 2040 (it was at 67 per cent in 2016), and to not much more than 50 per cent—down from 60 per cent in 1981—for households in the 25–55 age bracket. 

Analysis suggests the change has come from complex shifts throughout the entire institutional environment, which includes the values, structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation that govern the behaviour of people, organisations and government within a society.

The projected declines mean Australia will no longer be a society with near universal home ownership, but a dual tenure society in which one half (owners; predominantly older households) acquires wealth and the other half (renters; generally younger) doesn’t—a recipe for long-term social problems. Addressing the generational divide will require new policy instruments to give renters the opportunity achieve greater security, affordability and liveability in private rental (and also rebuilding social housing). It will also need to enable renters to create wealth and/or processes to redistribute some of the asset-generated wealth of owners. In addition, it will require greater income support for households in older age.