Housing Unaffordability at the Statistical Local Area Level: New Estimates Using Spatial Microstimulation

This paper examines housing affordability estimates at the ASGC2001 Statistical Local Area (SLA) level and assesses spatial and other distributive patterns of households experiencing housing unaffordability. The study covers all SLAs in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the ACT, and there is a particular focus on the spatial distribution of housing unaffordability across the Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney Statistical Divisions. The housing affordability estimates are output from a project to develop and apply spatial microsimulation techniques to generate detailed synthetic small-area data for use as a decision support tool by state and territory governments. The synthetic data have been produced through reweighting of the 1998-99 ABS Household Expenditure Survey Confidentialised Unit Record File (CURF), with the 2001 Census Expanded Community Profile (XCP) used as the small-area 'target' data. As well as reviewing the results and implications of the housing unaffordability estimates, this paper provides a general overview of the scope of the linkage project, and the methodological approaches taken in building the estimates. This background includes attention to methodological issues encountered and solutions developed, and to methods of data validation.