Skip to main content RSS Info Close Search Facebook Twitter
Location
Category
Providers / Vacancies
Feedback

Older Australians suffering from mortgage stress

Australia’s housing affordability crisis is now seriously hitting older people with barely half of those aged 55 to 64 having paid off their homes and people in retirement struggling to pay off their mortgages.

The Federal Treasury’s modelling chief, Phil Gallagher, told a recent Senate inquiry into housing affordability that the proportion of people aged 55 to 64 who fully owned their home had decreased from 72% to 54% while those still paying off their mortgages had doubled from 13% to 27%.

The inquiry was told that rising house prices were largely due to the gap between the supply of new houses now about 150,000 a year – and an underlying demand of between 180,000 and 190,000.

The latest Bureau of Statistics survey for 2005-06 housing costs found that even among people aged 65 to 74 the proportion of people fully owning their home had dropped from 81% to 75% in a decade.

Of all Australians aged 55 and over almost 10% were suffering ‘mortgage stress’ through having to pay more than 30% of their income in mortgage costs or rental payments.

Share this article

Read next

Subscribe

Subscribe to our Talking Aged Care newsletter to get our latest articles, delivered straight to your inbox
  1. Who says your age should limit your dreams?
  2. Data from a recently released report highlights a concerning...
  3. With an ageing and growing population, data from the...
  4. Approximately 411,000 Australians are estimated to be living...
  5. How could you benefit from attending university as an older...
  6. Fueling your body with healthy foods as you age could help...

Recent articles

  1. Do you know how to reduce your risk of being scammed?
  2. Who says your age should limit your dreams?
  3. How did residents celebrate their aged care precinct’s...
  4. Why is the passing of the Aged Care Act Bill so important for...
  5. What is the expected impact of the changes to the upcoming...
  6. Recently published retirees prove that it’s never too...
  7. In the last decade, people aged 65 years or older were...
  8. What caused an increase in the number of calls to advocacy...
  9. Managing your medications may seem difficult but it...
  10. Dementia Australia’s free information sessions can help...
  11. Waiting to update your will and other legal documents could...
  12. Palliative care allows Australians at the end of their lives...
  1. {{ result.posted_at | timeago }}

Sorry, no results were found
Perhaps you misspelled your search query, or need to try using broader search terms.
Please type a topic to search
Some frequently searched topics are "dementia", "elderly" etc
Close