The number of Australians who are concerned that they may never be able to buy a home is significantly higher than the worldwide average, new research reveals.
ING has published the results of its International Survey Homes and Mortgages 2017, which show that, on average, 48 per cent of people around the world believe that they will never be in a comfortable enough position financially to be able to purchase their own home.
However, in Australia, this figure rises to almost two-thirds (62 per cent), which suggests that tough property market conditions and continually rising house prices down under are having a distinct impact on the younger generation's ability to get on the property ladder.
Despite the continued rise of property prices in Australia, almost 70 per cent of the Aussies questioned by ING said they still believed that purchasing a property was a smart financial decision. A similar number of respondents from Europe and the US reported the same.
Conversely, some were happy with the flexibility that renting allows for, with 40 per cent of people across the world citing this as a positive of not being tied to a property that they own. Germans were most likely to favour this, with 49 per cent stating that it was a plus.
Germany is often regarded as a nation of renters, yet 58 per cent of respondents from the country said that they agreed with the statement 'everyone would buy if they could afford to'.
Ian Bright, senior economist and managing director of group research at ING, commented: "Most people want to buy a house...yet many accept that they are now unlikely to buy.
"If you combine this with our findings that a higher proportion of homeowners are happy with their housing situation, compared with renters, then it seems that more people will feel incredibly frustrated with their housing choices in the future."
