Financing first home ownership: Opportunities and challenges

Abstract

This final Inquiry examines the challenges of financing to buy a first home. It incorporates four supporting Research Projects and focuses on socio-economic developments and policy settings that impact access to home ownership.

While high house prices are often cited as the biggest challenge faced by first homebuyers, this Inquiry highlights that the problem is significantly more complex. Critically, existing policy settings are likely to have exacerbated rather than alleviated the challenge faced by first homebuyers to finance home ownership. Politically seductive measures such as first homeowner grants and tax concessions have failed to arrest declining rates of home ownership.

The Inquiry makes six key recommendations.