This is an interim report outlining the preliminary evidence of a project that seeks to examine the evolution of the housing system between the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic, and its early impacts. The project seeks to establish whether key market institutions were more resilient going into the COVID-19 pandemic than into the GFC.

Focusing on two market institutions, namely the mortgage and the housing building industries, the first stage of the research involved a series of semi-structured interviews, examining five principal questions:

• How well was the industry able to withstand the shock of the GFC?
• How well was the industry and government able to learn from the shock?
• How has the industry adapted to changing markets?
• What has been the initial impact of COVID-19?
• What are the medium and longer term-impacts of COVID-19?