Simply put, Australia has not been building enough homes to meet the demands of its rapidly growing population, creating a scarcity that makes any available home more expensive to buy or rent.
Compounding the issue are Australia's restrictive planning laws, which prevent homes being built where most people want to live, such as in major cities.
Red tape means that popular metropolitan areas like Melbourne and Sydney are far less dense than comparably sized cities around the world.
The steady decline of public housing and ballooning waitlists have made matters worse, tipping people into homelessness or overcrowded living conditions.
Climate change has also made many areas increasingly unliveable, with natural disasters such as bushfires and severe storms destroying large swathes of properties.
Meanwhile, decades of government policies have commercialised property ownership. So the ideal of owning a home, once seen as a right in Australia, has turned into an investment opportunity.
How much do I need to buy or rent a home in Australia?
In short: it depends where you live.
Sydney is currently the second least affordable city in the world to buy a property, according to a 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.
The latest data from property analytics company CoreLogic shows the average Sydney home costs almost A$1.2m (£570,294, $742,026).
Across the nation's capital cities, the combined average house price sits at just over A$900,000.
House prices in Australia overall have also jumped 39.1% in the last five years – and wages have failed to keep up.
It now takes the average prospective homeowner around 10 years to save the 20% deposit usually required to buy an average home, according to a 2024 State of the Housing System report.
The rental market has provided little relief, with rents increasing by 36.1% nationally since the onset of Covid – an equivalent rise of A$171 per week.
Sydney topped the charts with a median weekly rent of A$773, according to CoreLogic's latest rental review. Perth came in second with average rents at A$695 per week, followed by Canberra at A$667 per week.
Are immigration and foreign buyers causing housing strain?
Immigration and foreign property purchases are often cited as causes for Australia's housing crisis. But experts say that they are not significant contributors statistically.
Many people who move to Australia are temporary migrants, such as international students who live in dedicated student accommodation rather than entering the housing market, according to Michael Fotheringham, head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
"The impact [of migrants] on the housing market is not as profound as some commentators have suggested," Mr Fotheringham tells the BBC.
The federal government also recently sought to crack down on foreign homebuyers, by tripling fees.
However that is "a very small issue" with not much meaningful impact on housing strain, says Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute public policy think tank.
