Summary
What are Australians’ housing priorities? Is having a garden more important than access to public transport? How important is it to us to live close to work? And do these priorities differ across age groups and household types?
As an extension to Grattan’s report The Housing We’d Choose, this working paper analyses the responses of over 700 city residents who were asked about their housing and location priorities.
In some ways, what this representative sample of Sydney and Melbourne residents of Sydney and Melbourne said was surprising. Although it is often assumed that living in a separate house on a large block of land is what most Australians want, ‘whether the house is detached’ was only the 5th most important variable, and having a big garden was ranked 20th.
The data also suggest that there are real differences in priorities across the population. In particular, while young families were focussed on house size and type, older and single-person households were much more likely to think that characteristics of where they live are more important. Given our ageing population and the growth of smaller households, these differences could result in significant shifts in the mix of housing we want.