Measuring the market for platform mediated shared housing in Australia

Digital platforms have transformed housing markets and opened insights into a range of informal rental practices that are difficult to detect and monitor, such as sharing. Once primarily confined to young adults or very low-income earners unable to afford conventional accommodation, sharing late into adulthood has become increasingly common, enabled by numerous digital housing platforms. This paper examines longitudinal trends in the supply of accommodation advertised by a dominant shared housing platform in Australia, ‘Flatmates.com.au,’ over a three-year period. We focus on advertisements seeking or offering shared accommodation in Australia’s three most expensive three cities: Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane; relative to advertisements in the conventional rental market for unoccupied units. In doing so, we trace relationships between demand (seeking) and supply (offering) across shared and non-shared rental sectors. Our findings demonstrate that share housing advertised online operates as a distinct segment of the wider rental market, supplying lower cost accommodation in response to rising demand. Overall, our study contributes to the growing literature on informal housing markets in the so-called global north and specific implications for policy makers and planners responsible for addressing the needs of low-income renters.