As home ownership rates decline across all age cohorts, the suboptimal quantity, allocation, and security of housing opportunities in the rental market has received increasing policy attention. To date, fiscal strategies for attracting investment towards rental housing have had limited success, especially in attracting institutional investors to this sector.

Housing stress is only weakly linked with indicators of wellbeing such as health and financial stress. Alternative, narrower measures of housing affordability are needed to better quantify household affordability problems and thus better inform policy formulation in Australia. Key points:

Despite the plethora of rental research, a significant gap remains in understanding the relationship between rental housing and 'transport disadvantage'. This project analyses the changing spatial concentration of lower-income renter households in Melbourne and Sydney and connects this with changes in transport opportunity.

Summary: This project provided policy-makers with an understanding of the complexity of property finance, its role in the supply of all housing types and tenures and the impact of the Global Financial Crisis on property lending. Description The researchers interviewed property developers and financiers in Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria who were involved...

This research aimed to understand more fully the phenomenon of downsizing in the Australian context including: the extent of downsizing amongst older Australians; who downsizes and why; and what is involved in the process. Executive summary Context