Luxury towers rising above boarded ground-floor shopfronts on a tired urban street.

Scenario

Continued affordability decline

A path in which prices and rents keep outrunning incomes in high-demand cities, delaying household formation and deepening rent burden.

SCENARIOA possible future outcome based on stated assumptions.

Decline does not require a crash. It requires a continuation: costs compounding faster than pay, year after year, in the places people need to live.

Time period
Through the 2030s
Assumptions
  • High-demand cities continue to add jobs faster than homes.
  • Owner households continue to treat housing primarily as a wealth store.
  • Social rental stock does not expand enough to absorb displaced demand.
Methodology
Extends OECD affordability evidence and national supply-gap work as a downside case, not as a certainty.
Variables
Price-to-income · Rent burden · Household formation age · Homelessness counts where official
Uncertainty
A severe downturn can interrupt this path without solving the structural shortage. Interruption is not resolution.
What could change the result
  • Sustained construction boom
  • Large social-housing programs
  • Income growth concentrated among renters