Following young people’s pathways into (and out of) home ownership can cast light on their future possible trajectories and be useful for a forward-looking housing policy.

For generations, Australia has been understood as a homeowning nation. And the expected housing pathway was relatively simple. Young adults left the family home, rented for a few years, bought a home and gradually paid off their mortgage. This “Great Australian Dream” came to shape how many Australians thought about adulthood, financial security and the future.

This has changed. Australians are renting for longer, relying more heavily on the “bank of mum and dad”, or never entering homeownership at all.

Price is one obvious factor. As a recent Sydney Morning Herald feature story showed, if prices had simply kept pace with inflation since 1996, the median house price in Sydney today would be about $465,000. Instead, it’s $1.79 million.

Our recent research shows housing pathways are shaped long before someone buys their first home. Family resources and labour market opportunities strongly influence who is able to follow pathways into homeownership, and who remains in long-term renting. We also found almost half of young people followed much more disrupted housing pathways, moving repeatedly between renting, homeownership and, in some cases, back........

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