Australia’s housing affordability crisis has forced many people to seek share accommodation via online platforms, even late into adulthood. This presentation examines this trend in Australia’s most expensive three cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Analysing advertisements placed on dominant platform ‘Flatmates.com.au’ by people seeking or offering shared accommodation between 2021-2023, clear patterns appear in the supply of, and demand for, share accommodation across the three cities. The analysis shows clear parallels with rental vacancies and prices in the conventional market, showing rising demand for share accommodation in response to constrained supply and or rising rents. This suggests that share housing should be understood as a distinct segment of the wider rental market, despite serious concerns about the safety and cost of share accommodation for vulnerable groups such as older women and families with children. Australia’s failure to supply sufficient affordable and secure housing for lower income groups, combined with inadequate rental protections for renters, has left vulnerable groups open to precarious arrangements facilitated by online platforms. The Australian case therefore serves as a cautionary tale for other countries experiencing rising affordability pressures and inadequate regulatory oversight of new housing market practices.
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