Housing affordability

Supporting customers through all life moments.

Our ambition

Our ambition is to contribute to Australia's prosperity by supporting increased availability and affordability of housing. 

Our new enterprise-wide strategy brings together related activities across the bank to help contribute to additional housing supply and support improved access to housing options for customers. 

Supporting our strategy, we have set a target1 to finance $100 billion by 2030 to help increase the supply of homes in Australia, including social and affordable housing and opportunities for renters, as well as access pathways to home ownership.

Our focus areas

Supporting social and affordable housing

Increasing the supply of social and affordable housing is critical to improving housing options for lower income households and essential workers. We work with the community housing sector through financing, government partnerships and investment structures that help improve project viability and attract additional sources of capital.

Greater opportunities for renters

Rental housing plays an important role in Australia's housing system. We finance a range of rental housing models, including purpose-built student accommodation, build-to-rent and co-living properties to support greater housing supply and choice.

Pathways to home ownership

Home ownership remains a priority for many Australians, but affordability and access continue to present challenges. Saving a deposit remains one of the largest barriers for many prospective home buyers. We support first home buyers and alternative pathways to ownership through a range of lending solutions designed to broaden access while maintaining prudent risk settings.

Helpful resources

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Our progress

Sustainability reporting

We seek to report regularly to help stakeholders to compare our relative performance overtime.

Sustainability insights

Explore more sustainability insights and articles.

 

Things you should know

  1. The Housing Target is predominantly for the purpose of addressing housing supply challenges in Australia and includes a proportion to support demand. The Target measures eligible gross new lending from FY2026 to FY2030, including financing for residential development and investment, purchases of newly erected dwellings and residential land, and lending under the Government 5% Deposit Scheme (as a pathway to home ownership), as well as other eligible housing activities.  Social housing may include low-cost or subsidised rental housing provided to eligible tenants by government or charitable organisations1. Affordable housing may include rental housing for people on low to moderate incomes that has a rent set at a level lower than market rents - generally capped at a maximum of 80% of the market rent2. Opportunities for renters may include purpose-built student accommodation, Build to Rent and co-living properties. Pathways to home ownership may include initiatives and products that increase access to home ownership. These descriptions are not intended to be exhaustive or static definitions. Eligible activities, including those described above, may evolve over the period to 2030. Target achievement is subject to assumptions and dependencies including customer demand, broader economic conditions, government policy, and Westpac’s credit standards, risk appetite and portfolio concentration limits. These factors may change over the period to 2030.
    1&2 ACNC Commissioners Interpretation Statement: Community Housing.