RECENT HOME BUYERS

The 2015–16 Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) collected a range of information on those households who purchased a dwelling in the three years prior to the date of the survey interview. This enables analysis on two groups of recent purchasers – those who purchased their first home (first home buyers) and those who had previously owned a home (changeover buyers). While not intended to provide a measure of the prevalence of first home buyers, the SIH allows for comparative analysis of demographic and housing cost factors associated with these two groups.

In 2015–16 approximately 958,000 households had purchased the dwelling they occupied in the three years prior to their interview. This figure was 895,700 in 2013–14, 988,140 in 2011–12 and 1,073,800 in 2009–10.

In 2015–16 33% of recent home buyers were first home buyers and 67% were changeover buyers.

Most first home buyers (63%) were in households with a reference person aged under 35 years. Fourteen percent of first home buyer households had a reference person aged 45 years and over. In contrast, 58% of changeover buyer households had a reference person aged 45 years and over.


Of all first home buyer households, 91% owned their home with a mortgage. Couple families with dependent children and couple only households made up the majority (65%) of first home buyers. A further 16% were lone person households.

First home buyers were significantly less likely than changeover buyers to buy a separate house (71% compared with 84%). Around 11% of the dwellings first home buyers bought were new.

The mean housing costs of changeover buyers that had a mortgage were $90 per week more than those of first home buyers with a mortgage ($590 per week compared with $500 per week). Recent home buyers on average spent 18% of their weekly gross household income on housing costs. This ratio was higher for first home buyers (20%) compared to changeover buyers (16%).

MEDIAN VALUE OF DWELLING

The median value of dwelling of changeover buyers was significantly larger than that of first home buyers, $580,000 and $450,000 respectively.

The median value of dwelling for all recent home buyers, that had a household reference person aged between 15 and 24 years, was around $345,000. This was significantly less than that of all other age groups.


For more information on recent home buyers see data cube 10 available from the Downloads page of this product.