Summary
This report presents data from the 2007-08 Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) home purchase assistance data collection.
Home purchase assistance is designed to meet local needs facing state and territory housing agencies, as well as meeting national housing priorities.
Recipients
In 2007-08 home purchase assistance was provided to 32,292 households in Australia across a range of program types including direct lending, deposit assistance, interest rate assistance, mortgage relief, home purchase advisory and counselling services and other forms of assistance. Of these, there were 560 Indigenous households. The number of households assisted has increased compared to the previous year, where 31,483 households received CSHA home purchase assistance.
How assistance was provided
Approximately $1.2 billion was spent on home purchase assistance in 2007-08, compared with $707.1 million the previous year, a 39% increase. Most of this funding ($1.1 billion) was provided as home loans, with the majority of it going to home purchasers in Western Australia (78% or $881.6 million) and South Australia (21% or $233.5 million). Other home purchase assistance funding included $16.1 million in interest rate assistance, almost $6 million in mortgage relief, $184,000 in home purchase advisory and counselling services and $110,000 in deposit assistance. The remaining went to other one-off forms of assistance such as Victoria�s Shared Home Ownership Scheme.
Some data limitations
There is considerable variability across jurisdictions in terms of program guidelines and coverage of home purchase assistance. As a result, despite the development and agreement of standard national data definitions, the data derived are less comparable than for the major national programs such as public rental housing and community housing. Nonetheless, the available information provides a valuable resource for understanding the characteristics of these programs across all jurisdictions.
Also, information for all six home purchase assistance programs was not provided by all jurisdictions, therefore national totals include only jurisdictions for which data are available.