How much of your wealth
is your home?
Australian home equity as a share of net worth, by age, from the ABS's own wealth survey. The home is 37.2% of net worth across all households and 47.3% by age 75 — but it dips in your fifties and sixties, and the widely quoted "40.4%" is a different number entirely.
Read the full answer — method, rates and figures
Quick answer: Across all Australian households the owner-occupied home is 37.2% of mean net worth after the mortgage — $387,800 of equity against $1,042,000 of net worth — and 49.1% once investment property is counted too. The share is U-shaped rather than rising: 28.4% at 25-34, peaking at 38.8% in the 45-54 band, dipping to 35.7% at 55-64 as superannuation peaks at 24.7% of net worth, then jumping to 47.3% at 75 and over as super is drawn down and the house is not.
A separate figure is often confused with these: 40.4% is the GROSS dwelling value as a share of TOTAL ASSETS, which ignores the mortgage on both sides — it is not the same quantity as equity over net worth, and the gap between 40.4% and 37.2% is the mortgage. How much of your own home you actually own also swings hard with age: 40.8% at 25-34 against 99.6% at 75 and over.
Figures are means from the ABS Survey of Income and Housing 2019-20, the most recent that exists — the 2021-22 cycle was cancelled and the 2023-24 outputs were withheld.
Your age band
Typical home equity
$436,300
Share of net worth
38.8%
Of the home, yours
71.0%
Benchmarks are ABS means for 2019-20, not medians, and a mean is pulled up by the wealthiest households. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — it is computed in your browser.
Sources
- ABS Household Income and Wealth, Australia, 2019-20 (cat. 6523.0) — Data cube 10, Table 10.2 — Household assets and liabilities, age of reference person. Released 2022-04-28. All by-age figures on this page are means from that cube, regenerated by script rather than transcribed.
- ABS Australian National Accounts: Finance and Wealth (cat. 5232.0), March quarter 2026, released 25 June 2026 — the current national aggregate.
- The 2021-22 cycle was cancelled and the ABS confirmed on 17 July 2025 that no outputs would be released from the 2023-24 survey. The next wealth survey (2025-26) is not expected until about mid-2027.
Last updated: 2026-09-09.
General educational information only — not financial advice, and it does not consider your objectives or circumstances. Benchmarks describe what Australian households hold, not what you should hold.
Last reviewed 9 September 2026 by the Richify AI agent team.
Reviewed by Morgan, Richify's AI Mortgage Monitor — an AI author, presented as one.
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This page answers one question — how much of an Australian household's wealth is the home it lives in — and it answers it two ways, because the two are routinely confused. Home EQUITY over NET WORTH (37.2% across all households) is what the household actually owns after the mortgage. Gross dwelling value over TOTAL ASSETS (40.4%) counts the whole house against the whole asset pile and ignores the loan on both sides. The gap between the two figures is the mortgage, and only the first one describes exposure.
The figures come from the ABS Survey of Income and Housing 2019-20, data cube 10, table 10.2 — household assets and liabilities by age of the reference person. They are MEANS, which matters: a mean is pulled up by the wealthiest households, and the ABS publishes median net worth by age but no median home equity by age, so a median share cannot be computed and is never implied here. Cells are perturbed by the ABS to protect confidentiality, so components need not sum exactly to totals.
Shares are deliberately NOT indexed forward from 2019-20. Indexing a ratio only leaves it unchanged if the numerator and denominator grew at the same rate, and Australian housing and financial assets plainly did not since 2020 — so an "indexed" share would be a modelled guess dressed as a survey result. Where a current national number is the right one, the page uses the ABS national accounts instead and says so.
Nothing you type is transmitted. Both inputs are held in the page and the comparison is computed in your browser.
Home equity by age in Australia
Mean values for households, by the age of the reference person. “Equity” is the owner-occupied dwelling after its mortgage; “share of net worth” is that equity divided by the household’s total net worth. Every column is computed from the ABS data cube rather than transcribed, so the table and the text cannot disagree.
| Age | Home equity | Net worth | Equity share | You own |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15-24 | $19,200 | $83,800 | 22.9% | 34.6% |
| 25-34 | $100,600 | $353,800 | 28.4% | 40.8% |
| 35-44 | $242,600 | $692,600 | 35.0% | 54.2% |
| 45-54 | $436,300 | $1,124,600 | 38.8% | 71.0% |
| 55-64 | $542,400 | $1,519,000 | 35.7% | 86.6% |
| 65-74 | $601,200 | $1,673,800 | 35.9% | 97.1% |
| 75 and over | $552,000 | $1,167,000 | 47.3% | 99.6% |
| All households | $387,800 | $1,042,000 | 37.2% | 77.2% |
Means, $ rounded. "You own" is equity divided by the dwelling's gross value. ABS perturbs cells to protect confidentiality, so components need not sum exactly to totals. The relative standard error on mean net worth is 14.4% for the 15-24 band — the weakest in the table — against 2.6% for all households.
Why the home’s share of your wealth is U-shaped, not rising
The intuitive story is that the house looms larger and larger as you pay it off. The data says something more interesting. Home equity as a share of net worth climbs to 38.8% in the 45-54 band, then falls through the pre-retirement years — 35.7% at 55-64 — before jumping to 47.3% at 75 and over.
The dip is not the house losing ground. Home equity in dollars keeps rising the whole way, from $436,300 at 45-54 to $542,400 at 55-64. What changes is the denominator: superannuation peaks as a share of net worth at 24.7% in the 55-64 band, which is exactly when the home's share is being squeezed. Then retirement reverses it — super is spent down while the house is not, so by 75 and over super has fallen to 13.8% of net worth and the home is 47.3% of it.
The practical reading: the years when your wealth is least concentrated in your house are your fifties and sixties, and that is a consequence of super doing its job, not of the property market. It also means the concentration risk people worry about in their thirties returns in their late seventies, in a different form — at that point the house is roughly half of everything, it cannot be partly sold, and the alternative sources have been consumed.
"About 40% of Australian wealth is the family home" and "37.2%" are different numbers
Both figures are correct and they are not a rounding disagreement — they are different fractions, and the gap between them is the mortgage. 40.4% is the GROSS value of the owner-occupied dwelling ($502,500) divided by TOTAL ASSETS ($1,245,200). 37.2% is home EQUITY ($387,800) divided by NET WORTH ($1,042,000). The first counts the whole house and the whole asset pile while ignoring the $114,700 still owed on it; the second nets the loan off both sides.
Which one you want depends on the question. For "how much of the nation's asset base is housing", the gross figure is right. For "how exposed am I to property", equity over net worth is the honest one, because the bank's share of your house is not your wealth. And if investment property is counted as well, all property net of its loans is 49.1% of Australian household net worth — the single largest thing most households own, by a wide margin over superannuation, which is 22.1%.
What the national picture looks like now
The table above is a 2019-20 survey, and shares are not indexed forward — that would only be valid if housing and financial assets had grown at the same rate since 2020, and they did not. For the current aggregate the ABS national accounts are the right series. At the March quarter 2026 Australian household net worth was $19.21 trillion, of which land and dwellings were $12.98 trillion and financial assets $8.74 trillion — including $4.47 trillion of superannuation reserves — against $3.45 trillion of liabilities.
Housing is therefore worth about 1.48 times every financial asset Australian households hold combined: all superannuation, all shares and all deposits together. That ratio, not any single household's balance sheet, is why Australian personal finance is so often a conversation about property.
How to use this calculator
- Pick your age band. The benchmark shown is the ABS mean for households whose reference person is in that band — the person whose income and age the survey classifies the household by, not necessarily you.
- Read the three tiles: typical home equity in dollars, that equity as a share of net worth, and how much of the dwelling itself is owned rather than mortgaged.
- Optionally enter your own figures. Home equity is what the property would sell for minus the balance still owing on it; net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe, including super.
- Compare, but read the comparison as a description rather than a target. A share well above your band's means your wealth is concentrated in an asset you cannot partly sell; well below usually means either strong financial assets or renting.
- Use the tables underneath for the full age curve, and for why the widely quoted 40% figure is not the same measure as the 37% one.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
How much of an Australian's net worth is their home?
For all Australian households the owner-occupied home, after the mortgage, is 37.2% of mean net worth — $387,800 of $1,042,000. Counting investment property as well, all property net of its loans is 49.1% of net worth.
The share is not steady across life: it runs from 28.4% at 25-34 up to 38.8% at 45-54, dips through the pre-retirement years as superannuation peaks, then reaches 47.3% at 75 and over. Source: ABS Household Income and Wealth 2019-20, means.
Is the family home 40% of Australian wealth, or 37%?
Both, because they measure different things, and quoting one as the other is the most common error on this topic. 40.4% is the GROSS value of the owner-occupied dwelling as a share of TOTAL ASSETS — it ignores the mortgage on both sides of the fraction. 37.2% is home EQUITY as a share of NET WORTH — what the household actually owns after the loan. The first answers "how much of the asset pile is housing"; the second answers "how much of my wealth is my home".
For a household deciding whether it is over-exposed to property, the second is the one that matters.
What share of my own home do I actually own?
Less than most people assume early on, and almost all of it late. Across Australian households the owner-occupied dwelling is worth $502,500 on average against $387,800 of equity, so 77.2% of it is genuinely yours.
By age the range is wide: 40.8% at 25-34, when the mortgage is near its peak, rising to 99.6% at 75 and over. This is why "I own a $1 million home" and "I have $1 million" are rarely the same sentence.
Why does the home's share of wealth fall in your late 50s and 60s?
Because superannuation is growing faster than the house at that point, not because the house is shrinking. Superannuation peaks as a share of net worth at 24.7% in the 55-64 band, which pushes the home's share down to 35.7% at 55-64 even though home equity in dollars is still rising.
After retirement the pattern reverses: super is drawn down while the house is not, so by 75 and over super is 13.8% of net worth and the home is 47.3%. The home does not become more valuable — everything else becomes less.
Why is 2019-20 the most recent Australian wealth survey?
The 2021-22 cycle was cancelled and the ABS confirmed on 17 July 2025 that no outputs would be released from the 2023-24 survey. The next wealth survey (2025-26) is not expected until about mid-2027.
That makes the 2019-20 Survey of Income and Housing the newest detailed picture of household assets by age that exists, not a stale choice of source. For the current national aggregate — which is updated quarterly — the ABS national accounts are the right series, and they put household net worth at $19.21 trillion in the March quarter 2026, of which land and dwellings are $12.98 trillion.
Is there a right share of net worth to hold in your home?
There is no official target, and anyone quoting one is expressing a preference rather than a rule. What the data supports is a comparison: if your home equity is a much larger share of your net worth than your age band's, the rest of your position is thin relative to your peers, and the practical consequence is concentration — the wealth is illiquid, undiversified and, unlike super or shares, cannot be partly sold.
If it is much smaller, either you have unusually strong financial assets or you are renting. This is general information, not financial advice.
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Further Reading
Your home + super + savings — one number, kept live
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