Housing
South Australians have long shared with Australians in general a high percentage of home ownership. In 1981, the dwellings of 31% of the resident households in the Adelaide Statistical Division were owned outright, 42% were being purchased through mortgage payments, and 25.5% were occupied as public or private rental dwellings. The remaining 1.5% were owners or purchasers undefined in the census. Seventy-seven per cent of households occupied detached dwellings; 7.6% were in semi-detached houses, 1.1% in row or terrace houses, and 13.5% in medium-density accommodation such as flats and town houses. There are very few 'high rise' dwellings in Adelaide; barely 0.25% of households were in dwellings of more than three storeys compared with 1.6% of all Australian households.
Owner occupiers
are most strongly represented among households in the middle ring of suburbs where a high proportion of residents have lived for more than twenty-five years and have thus been able to discharge their mortgages. High concentrations of owner occupiers occur in both high, middle and low income suburbs - the patterns reflecting length of residence rather than affluence or social class. Lower percentages of owner occupiers are found in the outer suburbs with their 'mortgage belts' and Housing Trust rental accommodation, as well as in the city of Adelaide and some adjacent inner suburbs where a substantial portion of the total housing is private rental accommodation.Purchasers make up the highest ratio of resident householders in those recently built outer suburbs where there has been little activity by the Housing Trust. The strongest shades on the purchasing map depict the location in 1981 of the 'mortgage belt' - that steadily outward-moving zone that forms the 'swinging electorates', which over the past twenty years, have determined the fate of Federal and State governments. Although these areas contain only a minority of the total households with mortgages, they are particularly sensitive to changing government policies on home loan conditions.
Tenants constitute the highest percentage of householders in two types of locality - those with substantial stocks of Housing Trust rental accommodation, and those with large numbers of private rental flats. The latter group occurs mainly within the City of Adelaide, in a ring of inner suburbs close to the parklands, and in some of the seaside suburbs, notably Glenelg. Zoning policies of some councils tend to restrict the spread of flats and other forms of medium-density housing into the middle ring of suburbs where there might be an increased demand in the next ten years.
Residential land values have been calculated by the South Australian Valuer General for the groups of census collection districts used as mapping units in this section. The data refer to the 'unimproved' value of residential density and the willingness of councils to permit flat development also influence land values. Attractive environments such as the eastern foothills and the sea-coast clearly have their impact. Low values occur on the northern and southern urban periphery despite considerable differences in the affluence and status of residents.
