Increased demand from students, retirees and families excluded from private rental have put new pressures on marginal rental accommodation. However residents—especially those with high needs—remain vulnerable in this tenure and often experience poor management, lack of safety and low quality or expensive housing. Better regulation and governance of the sector, licensing of operators and effective...

This research project investigated the marginal rental housing market, which includes boarding or rooming houses and residential (caravan) park accommodation and provided a typology of marginal rental housing.

Mortgage default has long term impacts on the financial wellbeing of households including bankruptcy, drawing on superannuation savings, and high levels of debt even after the sale of the house. Better access by borrowers to financial advice and mortgage relief assistance, as well as stricter lending standards and better consideration of illness and hardship by...

This is the second and final report on the problem of mortgage default in Australia. An earlier positioning paper (Berry et al., 2009) presented, in detail, a range of issues, views, evidence and potential policy directions concerning this subject. Both reports are to be read as one.

The Australian housing system has undergone major structural change in the past 20 years. Continuing population growth, falling average household size, strong economic growth and rising average incomes have underpinned buoyant demand for housing focused on metropolitan areas, smaller provincial cities, natural resource centres and tourist regions. Increasing income and wealth inequalities have changed patterns...