Housing adaptations to contemporary social, economic and demographic changes: the case of renter-owner households in Australia

This thesis explores one housing adaptation outside of the conventional owner/renter housing tenure dichotomy, namely renter-ownership, whereby a household lives in private rental while owning other property. Research for this thesis finds that one in ten renter households in Australia own property they do not live in, or around three per cent of all households, based on available secondary data. Taking into account property ownership identifies household polarisation between ‘property haves’ and ‘property have-nots’, irrespective of tenure status. This thesis demonstrates the need to consider property ownership, rather than tenure status, as one contributing factor to household divisions.