A new report from the OECD shows that Australia’s falling home ownership rates are at odds with international trends.

The OECD1 researchers assessed home ownership rates in 18 developed countries.

The property development industry group Urban Taskforce's chief executive, Aaron Gadiel, said the report has illustrated an Australian housing shortage.

"We can see the social cost of Australia's severe housing undersupply," Gadiel said.

"According to this study, Australia is one of just five countries where home ownership rates have fallen since the 1990s.

"Australia is grouped with Greece, Mexico France and Luxembourg as countries where an increased share of the population can't access a home of their own."

While Australia's home ownership level dropped from 71.4 to 69.5 per cent of the community in the study period, home ownership:

* in the United States increased from 66.2 per cent to 68.7 per cent;

* in the United Kingdom increased from 67.5 per cent to 70.7 per cent;

* in Canada increased from 61.3 per cent to 68.9 per cent; and

* in Germany increased from 36.3 per cent to 41.

The OECD said that Australia's homeownership rate would have declined even further had it not been for our ageing population.

"Older Australians are more likely to own their own home, so our changing demographics have propped up the headline home ownerships rate, disguising significant falls in home ownership amongst young and middle aged Australians," Mr Gadiel said.

"While the OECD found that some of the fall in Australia's home ownership rates could be explained by the increase in households headed by a single adult, most of the decline was unrelated to demographic factors."

Gadiel said Australia clearly has a problem that is shared by few other developed countries.

"There's no doubt that the underlying problem is Australia's national housing undersupply of 200,000 homes.

"Our town planning laws, high development levies and lack of urban infrastructure investment, have deprived Australia of the housing we need," he said.

"The current situation is unsustainable, but federal, state and local governments haven't given this issue the priority it deserves."

The latest OECD report is available here:

http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=ECO/WKP(2011)18&docLanguage=En

Architecture & Design Team

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