A new housing ownership model for ‘generation rent’
ISF and the Jumbunna Institute have received a prestigious research grant to explore how to make home ownership more accessible.
ISF and the Jumbunna Institute have received a prestigious research grant to explore how to make home ownership more accessible.
The grant was awarded by the James Martin Institute’s 2024 Policy Challenge, a program supporting research that addresses New South Wales’s biggest policy challenges. Our research project tackles housing, currently one of the most pressing challenges in NSW.
Housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable in NSW, with housing affordability at its worst level in three decades. Lower income renters are doing it particularly tough, struggling in a private rental market that is one of the least secure in the world.
Breaking into home ownership has never been more difficult. It takes longer to save for a deposit and repayments are harder to afford. Unsurprisingly, home ownership is declining for people of all ages, especially younger households.
This situation is widening economic and intergenerational division, pushing essential workers and young families out of city centres, and decreasing social cohesion.
Leveraging the planned introduction of the Australian government’s ‘Build to Rent’ legislation, our team is developing a model that would allow a renter in a development, including affordable rental dwellings, to build an ownership stake in their home over time. In contrast to existing first home buyer and shared equity schemes, this model does not require renters to have deposit savings or qualify for a bank loan. Instead, they can purchase shares in their home and later sell them, or pass their shares and occupancy rights on to children if they choose.
Our model will work within the draft Built to Rent legislation and ASIC rules, as well as identifying supportive longer-term policy and system changes. We will explore alignment with community-led housing models known to deliver positive outcomes overseas, such as limited equity housing co-operatives, and explore how our model can enable wealth creation for low and middle-income households whilst keeping housing more affordable over generations.
The project will engage with stakeholders across the government, finance, housing and property development sectors. In particular, we hope to explore the potential for values-aligned investment by Australian superannuation funds who represent keyworkers struggling to afford housing. An important aspect of the project is ensuring the model meets the needs of a wide variety of communities, including Aboriginal communities, and testing it in different geographic locations.
| Researchers | SDGs | |||
This project is working towards UN Sustainable Development Goals 10, 11 and 17.
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