Falling home ownership creates ageing time bomb

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By Leith van Onselen

The Grattan Institute’s John Daley last week gave a presentation to the Council of The Ageing conference on Housing for Senior Australians, whereby he noted that senior Australians generally face less housing pressures than younger Australians, but that the situation is likely to deteriorate from the 2030s due to falling home ownership rate among younger Australians.

Below are some of the key slides.

First, renting retirees are doing it tougher than their home-owning counterparts, but less so than other renters:

Older Australians are also receiving more taxpayer transfers than ever, which may be difficult to sustain in the future:

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Leading to widespread calls for owner-occupied housing to be included in the Aged Pension assets test:

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Home ownership has also collapsed among younger cohorts:

Which means that there will be way more renting retirees in the future:

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Grattan recommends planning reform to increase density in middle-ring suburbs in order to give retirees more options for downsizing and the ability to age in their current suburb:

Full report here.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.