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The Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation is currently inquiring into best ways to support regional development and the decentralisation of Commonwealth and corporate entities, including the economic impacts of moving Government departments to regional cities and ways to encourage larger businesses to follow them.

Amidst concerns about rising energy costs for Australian households, a look at Â鶹Éç research published in 2010 brings to light interesting differences between the energy expenditure of home owners and renters. The report, which examined 2006 HILDA data, found that on average, home owners spent more on energy running costs than households renting a similar size home in the private rental market.

In the UK, government ‘Rent to buy’ programs are ways to help lower income households to afford to buy a home. In Australia ‘Rent to buy’ contracts offered by private vendors are very different arrangements and have even been banned by one state.

Written in consultation with Professor Graeme Cooper and Manuel Makas, Director and Head of Real Estate at Greenwoods & Herbert Smith Freehills. In the May 2017 Budget, the Federal Government introduced a tax measure to ‘stimulate affordable housing through Managed Investment Trusts’, but just what does the proposal offer?

For an Australian household to be recorded as being in housing affordability stress (HAS) it has to be in the bottom 40 per cent of Australia’s income distribution and have housing costs that are greater than 30 per cent of its income. So what can the Census tell us about the incomes and thresholds of HAS for households in the first (Q1) and second (Q2) quintile (i.e. in the 0% to 20% range and the 21% to 40% range) of Australia’s income distribution?