Look how many of us live alone!

Today, I'll look at Australian household types with emphasis on those Aussies living alone.

One in ten Australians lives alone.

However, the recently released Census shows that a quarter of our occupied dwellings typically hold just one person, but 90% of us live with someone else.

Semantics?

Maybe? So let’s look at the data...

Number of occupied dwellings by household type

The following table shows that 26% of Australian occupied dwellings held just one resident in mid-August last year.

This proportion was 25.0% in 2016.

Size of lone-person household

The following table shows that the size of the lone-person households accounted for 34% of the overall increase in occupied dwellings over the past five years.

There has been some conjecture regarding the reduction in household size to 2.5 people on average per occupied dwelling in the latest census results.

Several have been saying that the increase in lone-person households – up 347,200 or 69,440 per annum – over the past five years has resulted in the decline in average Australian household size.

This is probably true.

Yet the average household size was 2.57 in 2016 and is currently estimated to be 2.54 - so not that big of a change.

In addition, some are saying that a big reason for the decline in rental vacancies is due to more renters opting to live alone.

Number of people per household type

Table 3 outlines the number of people per household type in 2016 and in 2021.

It shows that just 10% of Australians live alone.

Size of the number of people living alone

Table 4 shows that the size of the number of people living alone accounted for just 15% of the overall increase in the size of the Australian population between 2016 and 2021.

Key housing demographics by household type

Table 5 shows that 39% of lone person households rent.

This suggests that there has been a potential increase of about 135,000 lone person rental households over the past five years.

This equates to an 27,000 increase per annum.

The above might also be plausible especially when factoring in Covid’s potential impact – many choosing to self-isolate - and the fact that there were 75,000 rental vacancies in August 2016 versus about 37,000 in August last year.

We will know more when the next stage of the 2021 census is released later this month.

But for mine the big reason for the decline in available rental properties is that not enough new investment property has been built across the country over recent years.

It also doesn’t help when investors choose to lock-up their digs rather than rent them out.

Editor's Note: this article was originally published last year, but has been republished for the benefit of our many new subscribers.

About Michael Matusik Michael is director of independent property advisory Matusik Property Insights. He is independent, perceptive and to the point; has helped over 550 new residential developments come to fruition and writes his insightful Matusik Missive