Tackling barriers to (beneficial) housing mobility

Abstract

Housing mobility can provide welfare benefits to households who move to more suitable housing, while also enabling productivity gains through better matching of skills to jobs. Compared with other developed countries, Australians regularly move home, but rarely do so for work. Tenure security for private renters is low and in stark contrast to the United States, Australian renters are more likely to be forced to move by their landlord than choose to move for work. Reforms are recommended to level the playing field, by removing landlords' capacity to evict tenants without due cause and enabling greater entry of institutional investors into the housing market. Opportunities to reduce barriers to moving for owner–occupiers are identified: stamp duties could be replaced with less distortionary forms of taxation and exclusion of the family home in pension asset testing should be reviewed, as this exclusion discourages downsizing where doing so would reduce pension income.