Description

States and territories provide financial assistance to households to improve their access to home ownership through a number of programs and maintain administrative data sets about these programs. Extracts of these data sets are provided annually to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

The Home Purchase Assistance (HPA) programs offered by the states and territories are:

• direct lending (Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory). The program was previously offered by New South Wales and Victoria
• deposit assistance (Tasmania). The program was previously offered by Queensland and Western Australia
• interest rate assistance (South Australia)
• mortgage relief (Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory). The program was previously offered by New South Wales and Victoria
• other assistance grants (Tasmania and the Northern Territory).

Data include the:

• number of households that received:
  • HPA during the 2023–24 financial year
  • repayable forms of HPA prior to the 2023–24 financial year for which monies remain outstanding at the commencement of the 2023–24 financial year
• value of HPA received during the 2023–24 financial year.

Summary

• The data collected are an administrative by-product of the management of HPA programs delivered by states and territories and conform well in terms of scope, coverage and reference period.
• The data are published in AIHW reports.
• When comparing data across states and territories, consider the differences in the types of HPA programs and differences in the broader state and territory housing systems.
• Care should also be taken when comparing data across time due to changes in the underlying HPA programs and how they are classified.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is an independent corporate Commonwealth entity under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 (AIHW Act), governed by a management board and accountable to the Australian Parliament through the Health portfolio.

The AIHW is a nationally recognised information management agency. Its purpose is to create authoritative and accessible information and statistics that inform decisions and improve the health and welfare of all Australians.

Compliance with the confidentiality requirements in the AIHW Act, the Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and AIHW's data governance arrangements ensures that the AIHW is well positioned to release information for public benefit while protecting the identity of individuals and organisations.

For further information, see the AIHW website, which includes details about the AIHW's governance and our role and strategic goals.

The AIHW receives, compiles, edits and verifies the data in collaboration with states and territories. The finalised data sets are signed off by the states and territories and used by the AIHW for reporting, analysis and approved ad hoc data requests. Requests for jurisdiction-level data releases must be signed off by the relevant state or territory.

The reference period for the HPA data collection is based on the financial year (ending 30 June). The specific reference period for these data is 2023–24.

Data are reported in the AIHW’s annual Housing assistance in Australia reports.

Users can request additional disaggregation of data which are not available online or in reports (subject to the AIHW’s confidentiality policy and state and territory approval) via the AIHW’s online data request system. Depending on the nature of the request, access to unpublished data may also incur costs or require approval from the AIHW Ethics Committee.

General enquiries about AIHW publications can be directed to [email protected].

Metadata and definitions relating to this data source can be found in the Home purchase assistance data set specification 2013-.

Supplementary information can be found in the housing collection data manuals, which are available on request from [email protected].

The data collected are an administrative by-product of the management of HPA programs run by the states and territories and conform well in terms of scope, coverage and reference period.

HPA, for the purpose of this collection, relates to the provision of financial assistance to enable households to improve their access to home ownership and includes:

• direct lending (including government loans, shared equity loans and bridging loans)
• deposit assistance
• interest rate assistance
• mortgage relief
• other assistance grants.

It excludes:

• non-financial assistance (for example, home purchase advisory and counselling services)
• home renovation/maintenance services
• any assistance that does not directly facilitate the purchase of a home
• relocation or start up assistance
• the provision of housing or any share of it
• any expense incurred in providing assistance to a household that is not the value of financial assistance received directly by the household
• any aspect of a shared equity loan that is not direct lending, deposit assistance, interest rate assistance, or mortgage relief.

In-scope households are those that received:

• HPA assistance in the 2023–24 financial year
• repayable forms of HPA provided prior to the 2023–24 financial year for which monies remain outstanding at the commencement of the 2023–24 financial year.

There are known accuracy issues with the data collected:

• The administrative data sets from which this collection is drawn have inaccuracies to varying degrees including missing data and data coding or recording errors.
• Not all states and territories collect all data items.
• Information about the Indigenous status of the household is not collected for some programs within the HPA collection. Approximately 8% of all households reported in the 2023–24 collection had an unknown Indigenous status. As a result, caution should be taken when interpreting data relating to Indigenous people.

State- and territory-specific issues:

New South Wales

• Indigenous status of the household is an under count as it is not collected for some programs.
• For programs no longer offered to new applicants, household information is not updated to reflect any changes for existing applicants.

Victoria

• Indigenous status is not collected.
• Gross weekly income is not available.

Queensland

• Indigenous status is not collected.
• Weekly income is collected at time of application. Ongoing income reviews are not conducted unless the borrower advises of a change in circumstance. Therefore, weekly income details are only current for households that received assistance in the 2023–24 financial year.

Western Australia

• Gross weekly income is assessed as the latest annual household income divided by 52 weeks. Gross weekly income is not available for all loans mainly due to the age of loans and the age of the system.
• Indigenous status is unavailable for a number of records due to the age of the loans.

Tasmania

• Tasmania offers a shared equity loan program called MyHome for households with low to moderate income and first home buyers. The data for this scheme have been classified by Tasmania as ‘other assistance grants’ rather than ‘direct lending’ because it involves a repayable shared equity contribution that is funded by Homes Tasmania, but the program is provided through an independent financier.

Australian Capital Territory

• Gross weekly income is not reported in the 2023–24 collection. Income details are unknown for the direct lending program that closed to new applicants in 1996. Income details are not available for households accessing the current direct lending scheme because public housing tenants accessing this scheme were paying market rent and therefore not required to provide income details. Income eligibility for a shared equity loan is assessed by the lending bank.

Northern Territory

• Indigenous status is not collected.
• Gross weekly income is not available.

States and territories may publish their own analysis of home purchase assistance data, which may vary in scope from this collection.

Differences in the data collected, including which records are included or excluded from a calculation, affect the coherence of the output and comparisons between states and territories.

Coherence over time has been affected by changes in methodology:

• From 2022–23, remoteness area (RA) is determined using a concordance between 2022 postcodes and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) 2021 RA classification. From 2018–19 to 2021–22, a concordance between 2018 postcodes and the ASGS 2016 RA classification was used. For 2017–18, a concordance between 2017 postcodes and the ASGS 2016 RA classification was used. Previous years used a concordance between 2012 postcodes and the ASGS 2011 RA classification. Care is therefore required when comparing remoteness data across time.

The gross weekly household income is at the time of application with the following exceptions:

• New South Wales – data are collected a number of times throughout the course of the loan. The gross weekly household income is a requirement for the application. A Statement of Income, Assets & Liabilities can also be issued when trying to organise the monthly repayments. This can be issued multiple times if a request to vary repayments is received. The most recent record is used for reporting.
• Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory – data not provided.

State- and territory-specific issues:

Tasmania

• In 2020–21, a data quality issue resulted in the average amount of assistance provided to households receiving ‘other’ assistance to appear higher than it was.

Australian Capital Territory

• A shared equity scheme, which commenced in 2007, was included for the first time in the ‘direct lending’ category in 2018–19.
• The Australian Capital Territory offers a land rent scheme, which is not reported in this collection.