More Australians, including Boomers, support a drop in house prices

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The Morning Edition
Episode: More Australians, including Boomers, support a drop in house prices
Date: July 13, 2026
Host: Samantha Selinger-Morris
Guest: Shane Wright, Senior Economics Correspondent

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Episode Overview

This episode unpacks the surprising result of new polling: a significant majority of Australians now support a drop in house prices, reversing decades of cultural and political consensus. Host Samantha Selinger-Morris speaks with senior economics correspondent Shane Wright to analyze what’s driving this shift—including generational and political changes—the implications for policy, and what it could mean for Australia’s future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Majority Now Support Lower House Prices

• Latest Polling Findings (00:54–03:14):
  • In June, 54% of Australians supported lower house prices; new polling now shows 61% in favor.
  • Even among coalition (traditionally more conservative) voters, support for lower prices rose to 58% (up from 41% in June).
  • This consensus holds across all age and income groups: “No matter you live out the back of Burke or in the inner city, everyone says, yep, we’ve got stupid house prices, let's see them fall a bit.”
    • (Shane Wright, 01:44)

Historical Contrast and a Cultural Shift

• Housing Affordability as a New “Australian Religion” (02:22–03:33):
  • Australia’s traditional obsession with rising house prices is being challenged.
  • Reference to former Prime Minister John Howard’s 2003 comment: “No one’s ever stopped me saying I want the value of my house to fall.”
  • Average mortgage in NSW has risen from $250,000 (2003) to $860,000 (now).
• Generational Factors:
  • Massive demographic shift: two new generations (millennials, Gen Z) are locked out and frustrated.
  • Boomers became “the Bank of Mum and Dad” for younger buyers.
  • Political focus has shifted: “There is a reason Labor and Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have been talking about housing since they came to office.” (Shane Wright, 03:33)

Political Ramifications (05:05–09:12)

• Government Dilemma:
  • Admitting support for falling prices is politically risky (“wealth-destroying socialist”), but denying the problem is out of step with reality and public sentiment.
  • “Conventional wisdom is wrong. These polls show the community has actually moved on … there’s a whole different feeling.” (Shane Wright, 06:00)
• Coalition’s Position:
  • Even conservative voices (e.g., Pauline Hanson) now accept the need for lower prices.
• Home Owners’ Attitudes:
  • Fewer than one in five homeowners now prefer rising house prices: "You don’t win any election with that argument.” (Shane Wright, 07:12)
• Even Boomers Shift:
  • Among those over 55, a majority (58%) support lower prices—“even older exes and boomers... they are dying. There’s no way around that.” (Shane Wright, 08:13)

Social and Economic Effects

• Consequences of High Prices:
  • High mortgages damage fertility rates and delay family formation:
    • “Young people are coupling later … or not having children because they have a mortgage they can’t jump over, let alone with a child or two on their back.” (Shane Wright, 13:10)
  • Banking system heavily exposed: lower prices challenge lending practices.
  • Property taxes, stamp duty, and council rates are affected—but volume (turnover) is more crucial than price in government revenue.

Policy Implications and Future Trends

• Impact on Policy and Economics (11:13–16:26):
  • As public opinion shifts, further reforms (capital gains, negative gearing) may gain traction.
  • “Support for the government’s capital gains tax changes and its negative gearing changes… has climbed over the last month, opposition has fallen.” (Shane Wright, 10:54)
• Potential for Greater Productivity:
  • Shifting away from obsessing over property could unleash investment in more productive sectors.
    • “Building a house is not productive … it doesn’t enable the economy to grow faster.” (Shane Wright, 15:00)
  • Housing sector currently larger than mining as part of GDP—misaligned national priorities.
    • “There are better things to do than just Italian splashbacks in the kitchen.” (Shane Wright, 15:50)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “There’s so many people praying at the local Ray White every Sunday, aren’t they? Or Saturday.” (Shane Wright, 02:35)
• “We have literally stuffed up housing for a generation, more than 30 years. We’ve really managed to do that all by ourselves.” (Shane Wright, 09:13 & 13:51)
• “The population says the best way is actually to make house prices cheaper.” (Shane Wright, 09:00)
• “Conventional wisdom is wrong.” (Shane Wright, 06:00)
• “Fewer than one in five who own a home want the price to go up. You don’t win any election with that argument.” (Shane Wright, 07:12)
• “Maybe the argument is getting through to the public.” (Shane Wright, 11:00)
• “If all sides of politics are on side and accept that, yeah, we just can’t keep driving up house prices … then that element of the political debate that has really been an issue for the last 20, 25 years may actually quieten.” (Shane Wright, 13:51)
• “I think there are better things to do than just Italian splashbacks in the kitchen. … generating ideas that transform the economy.” (Shane Wright, 15:50)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:54 – Polling: Majority for lower house prices
• 03:14 – House prices since 2003: up 300%
• 05:05 – Government’s political dilemmas
• 07:29 – Even Boomers want lower prices
• 09:13 – “We have literally stuffed up housing for a generation.”
• 10:54 – Support for tax reforms rises
• 12:31 – Effects on banking and lending
• 13:10 – High mortgages affect fertility, family formation
• 15:00 – Housing & productivity, misallocation of resources
• 16:26 – What would signal real change—future metrics
• 17:43 – Episode wrap

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Conclusion

This episode challenges entrenched ideas about housing in Australia, providing clear evidence of a fundamental shift in public sentiment—even among older, traditionally asset-rich Australians—towards support for falling house prices. With broad implications for politics, policy, social structure, and economic strategy, Shane Wright argues that Australia may finally be reaching the end of its decades-long property obsession. The future, he suggests, will be measured not just by price tags, but by increased access, productivity, and realigned economic priorities.

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Transcript

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

A growing majority of Australians want housing prices to fall, in some cases by more than 20%, according to new polling exclusive to our mastheads. Could it be that our decades long obsession with growing house prices is finally

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

coming to a halt?

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris and you're listening to the Morning Edition from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Today, senior economics correspondent Shane Wright on why conventional wisdom about what voters want from their housing seems to be wrong. It's July 14th.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

Shane, welcome back to the podcast. Tell us, what does the latest Resolve Political Monitor polling tell us about how

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

Australians are feeling about house prices?

[Shane Wright]

Well, you know that there's been a huge debate about house prices, particularly in light of the budget in May. And so in June we actually asked the question, do people think they could live with lower house prices? And in June, 54%, which was a big surprise to us. Sky News did its own poll. They actually went, yep, that's where it is around. We actually have just asked it again. So in this new poll, 2200 people, 61% say thumbs up to lower house prices and a drop in the number of people who are opposed to lower house prices. Like it is in single figures and like even amongst coalition supporters. Now the coalition has been saying, well, this government just wants to drive down house prices. The coalition may be at odds with its own supporters because 58% of coalition voters, up from 41% in June. Yep. The country needs lower house prices, like in terms of polling and I have seen a lot of polls over the years to see these sorts of numbers and it's across every age group, every income group, no matter you live out the back of Burke or in the inner city, everyone says, yep, we've got stupid house prices, let's see them fall a bit.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

Okay, so is it fair to say, were you shocked by this, this, you know, quite sizable support among Australians for a drop in housing prices? I mean, dare I say it's almost an Australian religion for people to want their house prices to go up.

[Shane Wright]

Yes, yes. There's so many people praying at the, the local Ray White every Sunday, aren't they? Or Saturday.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

I mean, just about.

[Shane Wright]

Yeah. And I think you and I have talked previously about it was John Howard, more than 20 years ago, he was on Brisbane radio and revealed. No one's ever stopped me saying I want the value of my house to fall.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

That's right. And at the time, just to, just to give listeners some context. So that was 2003 and that was John Howard then being grilled because house prices had at that point doubled in the previous seven years. So the interviewer was grilling him to sort of, I guess, justify the continued rise in house prices. And that was back then.

[Shane Wright]

And they've gone up 300% since then.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

So I guess here's my question. Does this reflect a larger cultural shift in our values? And I mean that sincerely, you know, if at the time that was the prevailing wisdom, if John Howard indeed was right and if he was telling the unvarnished truth that really no one had ever complained about their house price going up, does this reflect some broader shift in values?

[Shane Wright]

I think it's reflecting a shift in the value of housing over the last last 20 years. That is part of it. There's also been a demographic change. Like when Howard was speaking in 2003, the boomer population was still seven years away from retiring. And their wealth, they were being made exceedingly wealthy by what was going on in the housing market. But since then, we've actually had two more generations move through millennials and Gen Z and they've gone, what the hell? Boomers have become the bank of Mum and dad as well as some of Gen X's. And they've all gone, hold on, when the hell did housing get so expensive? I think around 2003, the average mortgage in New South Wales was about 250,000. It's now 860,000. So people have gone, whoops, this has got out of control. And I think that's like there is a reason why labor and Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have been talking about housing for the last, well, since they came to office. They really did, because remember, they came to office in 2022. In 2021, the median House price in Sydney had gone up by more than 30% in 12 months. It's the biggest one year increase that the country has seen since the late 1980s. So, yep, that whole issue has really changed as well as the political debate.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

Okay, well, I want to ask you, I guess, about how this is landing politically because you are recording from Parliament House, the seat of power, as it were, at the moment. And one of our colleagues, Jack Maley, she wrote about this issue of housing just last weekend and she had said at the time that this has been tricky for the government. She said, notably, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

and Treasurer Jim Chalmers squirm when asked if lower housing prices were the intent

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

of the capital gains tax and negative gearing policies introduced in the May budget and now legislated. So this is tricky, right, because she was saying, you know, if you Say that you do support a drop in housing prices, you could be decried as a wealth destroying socialist. But if you say no, you're not against it, you're setting yourself against what almost every economist, politician and ordinary person has acknowledged for years, which of course is that property is completely unaffordable. So how does this, do you reckon, land, what are you hearing there in Parliament in terms of how this is landing with the government and others?

[Shane Wright]

Well, I think you were getting into the conventional political wisdom had been high prices are good for the incumbent. But the term conventional wisdom actually means it's wrong. Conventional wisdom is wrong. I think these two polls and what sky has also picked up is showing that the community has actually moved on from that default position of the major parties. And we can see, like Pauline Hanson, for instance, has said, yep, house prices have had to fall. And you've actually seen it in some of the media complaints and the questioning say you're trying to destroy the value of people's homes without they're taking it from maybe their listeners or their readers or from whoever's watching them. But once you get out into the field and ask people, there's a whole different feeling. And I want to touch on something else in the polling because someone might say, well, you're asking this question about house prices. It's. We're not asking about what about if your house price falls or the fact we did ask this question, we did this in this specific one. And again, the number, the proportion of people say, I don't, I only want my house price to go up 15%. So we're talking, we've asked these people, your house 15%, 17% amongst those who own their own home. So that's telling you, hold on. The number of people saying house prices continue to go up, that's a good thing, is less than one in five. You don't win any election with that argument.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

So I'm just curious, how do you square that, that people across the age demographics in particular are for house prices going down? Like it's one thing, of course, for people in the younger age groups, you would expect them to want, of course, house prices to go down because how else are they supposed to get into the market? But how do you square that? The older people who have answered this are also in support of house prices going down.

[Shane Wright]

I think labor could claim that they've won the political argument around the fact. And you can you hear it from Anthony Albanese quite often. No one says to me that the housing market is working properly. No One says the housing market is not broken. And I think the last 10, 15 years where we've got to this point, the tipping point in terms of the political argument has been reached like the, the lowest support, and this is for lower house prices is amongst over 55s, but that is still 58%, so more than half. So you go, yep, even, even older exes and boomers and remember, there are fewer boomers in the population now like they are, they are dying. There's no way getting around that. Yes, over that, over 55. These two, these few polls are actually telling you the political argument the last 10, 15 years has finally seeped into the consciousness of people. The fact that you've had a whole budget really shaped around housing affordability. The government has been banging on about this, really. The population says the best way is actually to make house prices cheaper.

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

After the break.

[Shane Wright]

We have literally stuffed up housing for a generation, more than 30 years. We've really managed to do that all by ourselves. And I think these sorts of polls are suggesting that the public has woken up, said we just can't do it no more.

[Virginia Giuffre]

Virginia Giuffre helped vanquish A Prince and a Millionaire and I won't stop fighting.

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

I will never be silenced.

[Virginia Giuffre]

But one of her toughest battles was a victory, very private one. It was the worst thing that could have happened to her. Her children were her life. Virginia, a podcast from the newsrooms of the age, the Sydney Morning Herald and WA Today out now.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

So how might this play for the coalition? I mean, this is just one more issue in which they can essentially not hammer Labour on for getting it wrong, do you think?

[Shane Wright]

I think they've got to change a bit of their, their argument in terms of don't follow the loudest voice on talkback radio and say it's end of days with house prices falling. The other thing in our polling, we, we did pick up that support for the government's capital gains tax changes and its negative gearing changes. Support has climbed over the last month, opposition has fallen and there's a bigger group who are unsure. So remember, again, a huge amount of noise. So maybe the argument is getting through to the public, like these are still, like, it's still tenuous, like you're still not getting the huge support for falling house prices that the rest of the poll shows. But there is an awareness that those policies, the very loud arguments against them that we're seeing in some quarters is actually going backwards, not going forwards in terms of support for the change.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

And Shane, I wanted to Ask you, I mean, if this, this trend in large percentage, I guess, of the electorate supporting the drop in housing prices, if this trend actually is sustained, might this actually impact future tax or political policy? You know, that could perhaps even bring a greater drop in housing price prices,

[Shane Wright]

do you think, in terms of the tax fallout, falls on the. It hits the states because they're the ones who collect stamp duty, but that is actually based on turnover. So there is an argument that if you get more turnover of housing stock, then you can offset the fall that comes because of the drop in value. Local councils, different story, they're trying to value land. So like most rates, council rates are based off the value of land as opposed to the house on top of it. Lots of people think, oh, my house is worth X. It's actually the land that councils are trying to get out for the value. So, yeah, there are ripple effects. Like the biggest ripple effect is actually through the banking system. If you had a big fall in the price of. In the value of homes, because our big four banks, they're big real estate agencies, effectively, and so so much of what they lend out on is based on the value of the home. So this would actually go. It would force those banks possibly to rethink where they're going.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

How might that look, practically? What might it force banks to do?

[Shane Wright]

If you follow through the logic of the argument, you'd say, well, you'd get a tightening of credit availability.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

Right.

[Shane Wright]

However, if the fall in the value of houses is larger than the drop in credit availability, it means you and I, Sammy, we go out to buy our dream home together, we don't need as big a mortgage, so the bank doesn't have to lend us as much. And this is where part of the problem is, and I think this is what's showing up in these figures is that people look at average mortgages that are nationally around $750,000 and going, that's ludicrous. And it's hard to argue with that gut feel that a mortgage that size and the social ramifications. I think you and I have talked about this, we know that it's affecting fertility rates. Yes, we have. Young people are coupling later and they're putting off having children or they're not having children because they have a mortgage they can't jump over, let alone with a child or two on their back. There's no way. So there are social ramifications, let alone the fiscal and economic ramifications.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

Well, this is what I wanted to wrap up by asking you, Shane, was what Economic ramifications might we see a little bit down the track from this particular trend or this feeling within the electorate?

[Shane Wright]

Look, if all sides of politics are on side and accept that, yeah, we just can't keep driving up house prices and looking at house prices as if it's, we're down at the tab like it's a betting market almost, then that element of the political debate that has really been an issue for the last 20, 25 years may actually quieten. And you think then that allows both sides of politics to get into other policy issues where there may be more economic or social ramifications. Because like we have literally stuffed up housing for a generation, more than 30 years, we've really managed to do that all by ourselves. And I think these sorts of polls are suggesting that the public has woken up, said we just can't do it no more.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

So what does that mean that politicians will focus on what instead might this better us in another way that we, these polls don't sort of necessarily speak to economically people.

[Shane Wright]

We talk a lot about productivity. Building a house is not productive yet it gives us shelter, but it doesn't enable the economy to grow faster, to produce goods and services more efficiently.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

And that's a big problem for us right now at the moment. We are not having good productivity, we're not having good economic growth.

[Shane Wright]

No, no. Like productivity has slowed to almost a standstill partly because we are spending as a community. We put more and more money into bricks and mortar. So if you think right, we're not having, we've decided, no, we're not going to keep, continue to do that. Well, yeah, where does, where does the income, where does money flow? It flows into ideas, it flows into business, it flows into better services. So you can see like the, the share of the housing market as a proportion of the overall economy. There are some estimates that it's actually larger than the mining sector. What we do around it, around housing, be it from construction to real estate agencies to the conveyancing industry. I think you could mount an argument that's probably not the best way to use the national economic output. I think there are better things to do than just Italian splashbacks in the kitchen. Whether that's an important development or whether improving our transport network, improving the just generating ideas that transform the economy and give people the prospect of employment in the future. But I think that's where like a policy, a slow moving policy mistake for 30 years is finally going to get addressed.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

So this is this slow moving train crash. Essentially. It's finally coming to a halt. Is this what's going to happen?

[Shane Wright]

I'm not convinced, but there is positive signs that maybe we've got there. Maybe.

[Interviewer (possibly a host or co-host)]

What would you need to see to be convinced that yes, we are finally, this, this slow moving train crash, which is to say economic policy that has driven prices up and up and up for, you know, 30 or more years, what would you need to see that would say, yes, we're done with that now?

[Shane Wright]

Well, you and I come back and do this podcast in five years and we'll say, right, first, home ownership is up, the average size mortgage is lower or has not moved in that five years. Construction costs in the housing sector have come down, there is more movement, people are moving a bit more. Like we there is a clear sign that house high house prices and the stamp duties around them, they prevent people from moving around and moving around to the jobs, the better paying jobs, the jobs that are better suited to what they can do. We can talk about the fact that the home ownership rates amongst people under the age of 35 have started lifting. That would be the biggest test.

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

Thank you so much, Shane, for your time.

[Shane Wright]

It is always a pleasure to talk to you, Sami.

[Samantha Sellinger Morris]

In other news today, gaps in major tech platforms, monitoring measures are allowing sexual extortion, that's typical targeting young men to thrive in Australia, according to a new report from Australia's online safety regulator. And Los Angeles based Australian chef Curtis Stone will open his first Australian restaurant, a 100 seat harbour side restaurant at the incoming Waldorf Astoria Sydney at Circular Quay. You can read more at theage.com au or smh.com au Today's episode was produced by Josh Towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. And our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow the MORNING edition and leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening.