Summary:

This theme focuses on understanding housing markets. It brings together and synthesises the body of research on national, regional, sub-regional and local housing markets. It aims to address the historic evolution of housing affordability problems and is particularly concerned with the role of housing supply in alleviating those pressures. For example, the theme will explicitly consider the policy solutions brought forward to address housing supply and affordability problems in the 1990s and 2000s, and unpick the factors that limited the success of those policies. Housing supply outcomes are often out of synch with the intentions of policymakers, and given that policy problems rarely fall into neat theoretical boundaries, housing supply as an issue tends to generate ‘wicked problems’ that require new ways of thinking.

Therefore, in addition to assembling and synthesising the body of knowledge and increasing the capacity and capability of the housing research community, the ‘markets’ theme will consider the limitations in our understanding of owner-occupier and rental housing markets. This includes, for example, the dynamics of investment in housing (particularly rental housing), and limitations in the operation of the supply-side of the housing system. It is concerned with tenure shifts, new tenure models, reform and restructuring in private and social rental markets. The theme is therefore wide-ranging and intends to foster a deeper understanding of housing systems, and system change, in addition to providing a robust evidence base upon which to design policy options.

Theme lead:

Professor Chris Leishman (University of Adelaide)

Outputs:

View publications and blogs related to this theme.