Australia's housing council reports record rent burden of 33.1 per cent of median income

Australia's statutory housing adviser has recorded the worst rental and purchase affordability in its data series at the same moment it upgraded the outlook for how many homes will actually be built. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council delivered its State of the Housing System 2026 to the Minister for Housing on 24 April 2026 and released it publicly on 30 April 2026, the third such report required under the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Act 2023.

The headline numbers are precise. The rent-to-income ratio, the share of median household income needed to take up a new lease, reached 33.1 per cent in the December quarter of 2025, against a ten year average of 29.1 per cent. The time a median income household needs to save a 20 per cent deposit reached 11.2 years, against a ten year average of 9.6 years and about 9.0 years in 2015. The Council describes both as record low levels of affordability. Servicing a new mortgage still absorbed 45.9 per cent of median household income.

The burden is not evenly spread. Rent on a new lease took 35.4 per cent of income in regional areas and 31.4 per cent in capital cities over the year to December 2025. Using the HILDA survey, the Council found the share of renter households in the lowest two income quintiles paying more than 30 per cent of disposable income in rent rose from 24.9 per cent in 2014 to a series high of 29.5 per cent in 2024. On the purchase side, only 15 per cent of homes sold in 2024 to 2025 were affordable to a median income household, ranging from 8 per cent in Tasmania to 18 per cent in Victoria, with Western Australia falling from 25 per cent to 17 per cent in a single year. For households at the 30th income percentile the figure was 3 per cent. Social housing has drifted down to around 4 per cent of the dwelling stock.

On supply the report is more optimistic than its predecessor. Using data to early 2026, the Council estimated about 980,000 new homes could be expected over the National Housing Accord period, 42,000 more than it estimated a year earlier, and said the 1.2 million target had been on track to be reached by September 2030. That estimate was overtaken by events. The report models two scenarios drawn from oil price assumptions the Treasurer set out on 19 March 2026, an average of US$100 a barrel in the June quarter with a return to pre-conflict prices by year end, and US$120 a barrel taking three years to unwind. Under the first, a 6 per cent peak rise in construction costs, completions could be 10,000 lower to mid 2029. Under the second, a 10 per cent peak rise, 33,000 lower. The Council warned the downside risk could be greater than the scenarios show.

Independent data broadly corroborates the rental picture while differing on the exact figure. Cotality's rental review published on 15 April 2026 put the national vacancy rate at 1.6 per cent against a five year average of 3.2 per cent, with the Sydney median at $824 a week, up 5.9 per cent over the year. Reporting on 10 February 2026, the ABC cited Cotality figures showing tenants paying 33.4 per cent of pre-tax income, with national rents up 43.9 per cent over the five years to September 2025 while wages grew 17.5 per cent. The two measures of the rent burden, 33.1 and 33.4 per cent, are built differently and should not be read as a discrepancy in the underlying trend.

At the bottom of the market the numbers stop being ratios. Anglicare Australia's Rental Affordability Snapshot, reported on 30 April 2026, examined close to 50,000 listings advertised in March 2026 and found one that was affordable for a person on JobSeeker, none for Youth Allowance, 17 for the Disability Support Pension and 88 for the Age Pension. Anglicare's Kasy Chambers argued for changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, a remedy the Council does not endorse in those terms, though it lists tax reform to reduce distortions among its priority areas.

The Council's own outcomes framework registers the strain. Drawing on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's Specialist Homelessness Services annual report for 2024 to 2025, published on 4 December 2025 and covering almost 289,000 clients, it marks two homelessness indicators as worsening: the share of clients experiencing persistent homelessness rose to 27.4 per cent, and the share achieving a stable housing outcome fell to 61.6 per cent. The rate of homelessness itself is marked improving, but rests on the 2021 Census.

What is not yet known is whether the conflict scenarios materialise, whether the September 2030 date survives them, and what the 2026 Census will show about homelessness. The Council reports that the homelessness rate for First Nations people was almost nine times that of non-Indigenous Australians and severe overcrowding around fifteen times higher, gaps it does not forecast closing.