There are 1.45 million singles and couples receiving the Aged Pension benefits in Australia who own a home consisting of 3 bedrooms or more, conservatively that is half a million homes that are under utilised by people who could be described as empty-nesters. In fact 73% of Aged Pensioners own their own home outright. With the country faced with a massive shortage of houses for young families, these underutilised pensioner homes could be better served as homes for younger Australians looking to establish their own family home, just as the now empty-nesters once did themselves.

I am in favour of offering incentives to older Australians on the Aged Pension to move from their often expensive, high maintenance oversized houses to smaller simply constructed one and two bedroom homes in residential villages and unit blocks. The attached link gives the pros and cons of such an undertaking.

http://retirementessentials.com.au/news/retirement-advice-australia/pros-and-cons-of-downsizing-working-out-the-real-costs

Paul, you make some good points. Add to that the fact that Australia’s average house size is possibly the largest in the world, while the average number of people per household is falling steadily, and there is a serious mismatch between the composition of our housing stock and what we need, compounded by the fact that small (one or two person) households are often in big houses, as you indicate.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/house-size-by-country

The article you link to points to one of the issues – the high cost of downsizing, especially stamp duty. Given the (sometimes, poisonous) debate about inter-generational equity, I’m not sure that offering incentives to downsizers would go down very well politically, and it would be very hard to prevent any incentives from going mainly to the relatively affluent.

Hi, Rhian,

I put this topic up, as the problem of younger Australians getting into their own home, is for me a real dilemma, I see it in my family, young people who are cash rich but asset poor. Love em' or hate em', the Labor government has made some sort of attempt at tackling the problem. Unfortunately the supply of homes is not meeting demand. I also see a problem for older Australians who are in their own home, but don't have the means to live a comfortable lifestyle, due to the difficulties of supporting the house. These pensioners are asset rich, but cash poor. If government was willing to intervene and help both groups solve their problem, it would be a very good thing.

Friends of ours, have recently made the shift, about 4Km from a good house on a large block, to a private gated community home. They are on the Aged Pension. Sold for $1.15M, bought in for $765K. The new house is good for them, modern,comfortable, low maintenance, the catch is they don't own the land, only the house. It was a stressful move, but they did it at aged 80. They now have a house they like, cash to do want they want. seems a winning result, considering they have been able to keep the Aged Pension

Good point comrade!

Lets kick the grannies out of their family home or at least tax them per bedroom.

Old people love a 'Village' atmosphere. It makes them feel like they are in Tuscany.

Just keep it white only and they'll simply love it!

The government brings in way too many immigrants without considering how to house them.

The government then decides to build 1.25 million homes to house them, but, being government, fails miserably in their target.

So what to do when the government f$$ks up.....obviously, blame the people. T'was always thus.

So now the oldies are to be turfed out of their homes to cover for failed government policy.

Sounds about right.