The Australian housing market – understanding the causes and effects of rising prices

Mohammad Rahman

Policy Studies, 2010, vol. 31, issue 5, 577-590

Abstract: This article analyses current housing market conditions in Australia; specifically the factors that have caused increased housing prices in recent years and their implications. The article finds that the number of home owners with a mortgage and the number of renters have increased. For owners with a mortgage, average housing costs escalated substantially. Interest rates, investment demand, economic climate, financial deregulation and innovation, land supply and the land-use planning system, government taxes, levies and charges, demography, economic growth and wealth effect all play a vital role in influencing housing prices. Rising house prices positively impact on home owners' wealth, aggregate demand, employment and real GDP, and reduce affordability of first-home buyers and wellbeing of Australians in aggregate. It is argued that increasing the supply of housing, approval of tax-free savings for first-home buyers, regional development and reduction of government taxes, levies and charges should be the focus of future policy development to redress these problems.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2010.497261 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:31:y:2010:i:5:p:577-590

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2010.497261

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().