More property owners are relying on lenders, and one in 10 Australians now live in an apartment according to the 2021 Census.

Nearly 11 million (10,852,208) private dwellings were counted on Census night in August 2021, an increase of nearly one million (950,712) since 2016.

Two thirds of households (66.0 %) own their home outright or with a mortgage, very similar to Censuses back to 1996 (67.8 %). However, what has changed is the proportion of households that own outright; this has dropped from 40 % in 1996 (41.6 %) to 30 % in 2021 (31.0 %).

Furthermore, households that own with a mortgage have increased from about one in four of all households (26.2 %) in 1996 to around one in three households (35.0 %).

Interestingly too, while the number of homes owned outright has increased by 10 % over the last
25 years, the number owned with a mortgage has actually doubled (increased by 96.8 %).

Apartment living on the rise

The types of properties Australian’s are living in is changing too. Dwellings in Australia comprised of separate houses (70 %), apartments (16 %) and town houses (13 %).

The proportion of apartments continues to increase, with apartments accounting for nearly one third (30.9 %) of the increase in private dwellings since 2016.

For the first time in a Census, high rises (nine or more storeys) were separately identified. Last year on Census night, over half a million people (550,592) live in Australia’s 370,000 (368,943) high rise apartments.

Over 2.5 million people (2,620,903) or 10.3 % of us now live in apartments.

Unoccupied dwellings

Not all dwellings were occupied on Census night. These include properties such as vacant holiday homes or vacant investment properties, and the 2021 Census revealed there were more than one million (1,043,776) unoccupied dwellings.

There were also many alternative dwellings counted, including caravans (58,155), cabins and houseboats (29,369).

The Real Estate of Australia (REIA) president, Mr Hayden Groves said the Census had two key stats of note that provided opportunity to deal with housing supply and affordability challenges in Australia.

“The first is that the Great Australian Dream of home ownership is alive and well,” he said, “Home ownership is at the exact same level as the 2016 census at 31 %, but down on the 1996 home ownership levels of 41.6 %.”

He pointed out this is largely due to the spike in first home buyers over the COVID-19 crisis where Australian entered the market in large numbers, capitalising on low interest rates, government stimulus and investors holding off buying property as the pandemic broke.

Mr Groves said the second is a more serious ‘point in time’ observation about the latent capacity in the current housing stock that could be better used as private rentals. He believes we ought to consider ways to encourage property owners to return these homes back into the rental pool during times where major cities in Australia record very low vacancy rates.

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