One
Living alone, driving demand
Synopsis
Australia’s fastest-growing household type is now the single-person household. Living alone has surged from 8% in 1946 to nearly 28% today, reshaping demand for smaller, well-located homes. With one in three households soon to be solo, this structural shift - echoed across the world - is transforming Australia’s housing market.
Introduction
For decades, Australia’s housing debate has obsessed over the usual headline acts: soaring migration, slow approvals, rising costs, NIMBYism, and a construction sector that can’t catch a break. All true. All important.
But beneath all that noise sits one of the quietest, most powerful forces reshaping housing demand - the surge in single-person households.
Living alone was once a rarity. In 1946, just 8% of Australian households housed a solo occupant. By 1981 it was 18%. By 2011, 24%. At the 2021 Census we hit 26%, and today - in the post-pandemic world of remote work, lifestyle autonomy, and relationship shifts - the best estimate sits around 28%.
Project that trend forward and within 20 years, by 2046, one in three Australian households (35%) could house a person living alone.
This is no niche segment. It’s the fastest-growing household type in the country.
And it has massive housing implications.
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The maths that matters
Australia currently adds around 150,000 households a year. Between now and 2036, 50,000 of those - one in every three - will be new single-person households.
Here’s the punchline: Two people sharing require one dwelling. Two people living separately require two.
Even if population growth cools, household growth remains strong because people are forming more households from the same headcount.
This alone keeps upward pressure on housing demand, rents, and prices - and helps explain why Australia feels permanently short of supply, even when population growth ebbs.
Who lives alone in Australia?
According to the last accurate count (2021):
59% of solo households are owner-residents
41% are renters
Among owners living alone:
67% own outright
23% still carry a mortgage
Among renters living alone:
17% are in public housing
83% rent privately
The age split is equally revealing. Australia now hosts 2.6 million solo-occupant households:
27% are younger people
31% are middle-aged
42% are older Australians
That last group alone is nearly 1 million households, driven by widowhood, divorce, and an increasing desire for independent living late in life.
In short: living alone isn’t some youth fad. It’s a whole-of-life trend.
Global trends
Australia is not an outlier. The Economist calls it the “great relationship recession” - a broad, structural retreat from partnering, marriage, and long-term coupling.
Across 26 of 30 OECD nations, single-person households are rising. In Scandinavia, they already exceed 40% in many cities. In the U.S., marriage rates have halved since the 1970s and nearly half of young adults in their mid-twenties are single. In Asia, the shift is even sharper: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and increasingly China are seeing what demographers call the mass singlehood era.
The causes are strikingly similar:
Rising education, especially among women
Higher incomes and financial independence
Changing gender expectations
Longer working hours
Digital lifestyles that reduce social interaction
Cultural fatigue with unhappy relationships
A simple preference for autonomy
The Economist notes that many singles are not just unpartnered - they’re uninterested. Surveys show that around 50% of singles in rich countries are “not looking” for a partner at all. And this isn’t just about loneliness or difficulty finding someone; many say they simply prefer being single.
This is a generational shift, not a cyclical wobble. And if AI is going to have impact on us at all - it will be in this space - and will likely cause the current shift to accelerate.
And it flows directly into housing.
The housing consequences
A solo household consumes almost the same amount of infrastructure as a couple - one kitchen, one bathroom, one living space. But it consumes one dwelling instead of half of one.
That means:
More demand for 1-bedroom and compact 2-bedroom dwellings
More demand for well-located, walkable neighbourhoods
More need for middle-ring infill
More pressure on the private rental market
More downsizing among older Australians
More mismatches between what we build and who we’re building for
Yet Australia’s supply pipeline remains dominated by:
Large detached homes on the fringe; and
High-rise, high-cost apartments priced out of reach for singles, regardless of age.
The middle — townhomes, walk-ups, micro-apartments, small-format infill — remains chronically under built.
But that’s exactly the stock this trend demands.
The opportunity (and warning)
Australian planning systems still assume a “typical household” is a couple or family, even as they fall as a share of the market. Infrastructure charges, dwelling mixes, minimum sizes, setbacks, and zoning rules all tilt heavily toward larger households.
But the future demand base is shifting beneath our feet.
More older women living alone
More young adults delaying or opting out of relationships
More divorced men living alone longer
More migrant arrivals who eventually form solo households
More people choosing privacy and independence as a lifestyle, not a failure
Housing policy hasn’t caught up. Governments keep chasing population growth numbers while ignoring household formation - the metric that truly drives demand.
The bottom line
The rise of the solo household is not a social crisis. It’s a demographic reality.
And unless we adjust the types of dwellings we build - and where we build them - Australia will continue to chase its tail on housing supply, affordability, and diversity.
More Australians will live alone by choice, circumstance or necessity.
The question is whether our housing system is prepared to house them.