Home ownership in Australia
Encyclopedia
Home ownership is a key cultural icon in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Australians have traditionally aspired to the modest Great Australian Dream of "owning a detached house on a fenced block of land." Home-ownership has been seen as creating a responsible citizenry; according to a former Premier of Victoria, "The home owner feels that he has a stake in the country, and that he has something worth working for, living for, fighting for."

The Australian government has encouraged broad-scale home-ownership through tax incentive
Tax incentive
A tax incentive is an aspect of the tax code designed to incentivize, or encourage, a certain type of behavior. This may be accomplished through means including tax holidays, tax deductions, or tax abatements...

s(although mortgage interest is not tax deductible as, for example, in the USA); as a result, 70% of households own their own homes — one of the largest proportions of any nation
Owner-occupier
An owner-occupier is a person who lives in and owns the same home. It is a type of housing tenure. The home of the owner-occupier may be, for example, a house, apartment, condominium, or a housing cooperative...

. The prevalence of home-ownership has meant that renters and owners are not divided as sharply along income lines as they are elsewhere: 55% of low-income households and 80% of high-income households are home-owners.

In the past, home-ownership has been a sort of equalizing factor; in postwar Australia, immigrant Australians could often buy homes as quickly as native-born Australians. Additionally, Australian suburbs have been more socio-economically mixed
Income segregation
Income segregation is the separation of various peoples by class based on income. For example, certain people cannot get into country clubs because of insufficient funds. Many residential areas are as a practical matter segregated by income....

 than those in Britain or America. In Melbourne, for instance, one early observer noted that "a poor house stands side by side with a good house."

Affordability

Home-ownership in modern Australia, however, is becoming more exclusive. The ratio of Australians' average income to the price of the average home was at an all-time low in the late 1990s. Young people are buying homes at the lowest rates ever, and changes in work patterns are reducing many households' ability to retain their homes. Simultaneously, homes that are being constructed are increasing in sizehttp://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbytitle/3E12D6C335EF3618CA25745C001489F1?OpenDocument and holding fewer people on average than in the past. The fraction of houses with four or more bedrooms has increased from 15 percent in 1971 to greater than 30 percent in 2001.

Criticism

In June 2011, The CEO of ANZ Bank
ANZ Bank
The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited , commonly called ANZ, is the fourth largest bank in Australia, after the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac Banking Corporation and the National Australia Bank. Australian operations make up the largest part of ANZ's business, with commercial and retail...

, one of the big 4 banks in Australia and New Zealand said housing should not be a vehicle for speculative price growth, but simply as shelter. He also criticized the Federal Government's policy on Negative Gearing Tax Breaks which increases the focus on housing as an investment rather than shelter and decrease affordability.

See also

  • Public housing in Australia
    Public housing in Australia
    Public housing in Australia is usually provided by departments of state and territory governments. Australian public housing operates within the framework of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, by which funding for public housing is provided by both federal and state governments...



Poverty:
  • Homelessness in Australia
    Homelessness in Australia
    This article describes homelessness in Australia. The majority of long term homeless people are found in the large cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane...

  • Poverty in Australia
    Poverty in Australia
    Poverty in Australia is a contentious political issue. There is little doubt there is absolute poverty in Australia especially in Aboriginal communities....

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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