In the Detail
Topic

Housing

3 investigations.

Housing

Australia Has Nearly Enough Homes Under Construction to Hit Its Housing Target. It Finishes 172,928 a Year.

The National Housing Accord needs 240,000 homes a year. A record 242,874 dwellings are on site right now — but the pipeline is clearing more slowly than at almost any point in twenty-two years of ABS data. At the build-out rate that prevailed in the five years to 2019, that same pipeline would deliver 236,087 homes a year, within 2% of the target. The shortfall is not at the approval counter.

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Rooftop solar

Australia's Wealthiest Postcodes Have the Least Rooftop Solar

Rooftop solar is often cast as a benefit for households wealthy enough to own a home and buy panels. The installation record says the opposite about where it landed. Across 2,321 postcodes, the most advantaged tenth of the country has the lowest uptake of any group — 132.7 small-scale solar installations per 1,000 residents against a peak of 218.8 in the second-most-disadvantaged decile — and it stays lowest even when the comparison is narrowed to owner-occupied detached houses. The certificates that subsidise those panels are recovered from every electricity bill, including the renters and apartment-dwellers who install the fewest.

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Negative gearing

Cheap Money Nearly Switched Off Negative Gearing. The Rate Rise Switched It Back On.

In 2021–22, with the cash rate at a record-low 0.10%, the share of Australian landlords reporting a rental loss fell to 41.9% — the lowest in a quarter-century of tax records — and their combined losses shrank to $5.98 billion. Two years later, after the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.35%, 1.27 million landlords were negatively geared again, within 4.4% of its 2017–18 peak, and their losses had jumped to $15.22 billion. No tax law changed in between.

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