Aussie young people find it difficult to buy dream houses

Australia's young people are finding it increasingly difficult to buy their dream house - or any house for that matter - according to two stunning new reports.

On Monday, the Australian media discovered two listings for inner-city apartments in Melbourne seeking an extra tenant to rent out a pitched tent, one inside the bounds of the living room and the other on the balcony.

One of the apartments is believed to part of an illegal boarding house run by South Koreans, with six tenants sub-letting the living space for additional tenants.

According to Fairfax Media the space has already been filled by a new tenant, who will fork out almost 100 U.S. dollars a month for the tent plus the apartment's amenities.

The second tent, which is slightly cheaper at around 60 U.S. dollars a week, is on the upper balcony of a newly built apartment complex in Melbourne.

According to the listing, the seller lived in the tent for six months and spoke highly of the experience saying he "loved it".

"The tent is very comfortable. It has electricity and proper thick mattress bed inside, (with) heater provided as well," the advertisement read.

Young Australians are also set to struggle to upgrade to a bigger house, in order to settle down and raise a family, over the next decade, according to a research study released on Monday.

The Australian Population Research Institute report said 350,000 "detachable dwellings" - large family houses - would need to be build in Melbourne by 2022, to met the demands of 25 to 44-year-old couples.

The report, which looked at Australia's two largest cities in Sydney and Melbourne, found the older generation's refusal to downgrade their living space, despite their children having left home long ago, was influencing the shortage in freestanding homes.

"There are about four million bedrooms in Australia that are unused according to the calculations, that's even allowing for a spare bedroom to have guests over," the report's co-author David McCloskey told the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) on Monday.

"This is a really serious report that we're going to have to have the Reserve Bank and others have a really close look at it, because the implications for both Melbourne and Sydney from what we've found are really, really very serious."

McCloskey said the report showed the city's move toward apartment living was misguided, and a change of approach was required.

"Our report actually indicates an enormous miss match between supply and demand, if the current trajectory of approvals continue, by 2022, there will be 123,000 too many apartments in Melbourne," he said. Endit