Over half of permanent migrants aged 15 years and over (54 per cent) were buying or owned their own home, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today.
“With the release of the 2016 Australian Census and Migrants Integrated Dataset (ACMID), new information on household, family and dwelling characteristics of permanent migrants is now available,” said Denise Carlton, Program Manager of Population Statistics at the ABS.
“This data allows for new insights into the household and family characteristics of permanent migrants in Australia which was previously not available, including home ownership levels.”
Home ownership and rental levels differed by the visa stream of the permanent migrant.
Renting
Overall, 42 per cent of permanent migrants were renting in 2016. Migrants who entered the country through the Humanitarian stream were more likely to be living in rented accommodation (63 per cent) than migrants in the Skilled and Family streams (40 per cent).
Home Ownership
Over half of Family and Skill stream migrants were buying (i.e. had a mortgage) or owned their own home (58 per cent and 57 per cent respectively), compared with almost one third (31 per cent) of Humanitarian migrants.
Migrants in the Family stream had the highest incidence of outright home ownership at 14 per cent, followed by Skill stream (8.0 per cent) and Humanitarian stream migrants (4.7 per cent).
