ELEANOR HALL: If you're struggling to get into the Australian property market, the latest research from the Swinburne University of Technology suggests you're not alone.

The Australian Housing and Research Institute has found that renting is becoming a way of life for Australians of all ages.

As Mandie Sami reports.

WOMAN: We'd love to have our own property. But we missed that boat many years ago and we just had to say, okay, we'll rent. We've been renting a good 30-plus years. We will probably rent forever.

MAN: I like the idea of settling somewhere. And I think I can do it.

WOMAN 2: You haven't stuck for life. You'll never get out of a mortgage. If I'm married I'll get a home, but for now I'm just going to rent indefinitely.

MANDIE SAMI: It's not surprising that many Australians speak about home ownership like it's a distant dream.

According to the report from Swinburne's Australian Housing and Research Institute, 4.5 million Australians are currently renting.

That's about twice as many as in 1981, when many baby boomers were buying their first homes.

Kath Hulse, Professor in Housing Studies at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, explains the reasons behind the growing trend.

KATH HULSE: This seems to be the case Australia-wide. I think that this is a manifestation of housing affordability problems that people have been talking about for at least the last ten years. And that's about, can people afford to get into home ownership if that's what they want?

It's a catch-22. If you're renting and paying a market rent, they can be quite high. And if you've got children you tend to need a larger place to rent. And the more you're paying out on rent, the harder it is to save a deposit for a house.

And the other factor I think that's important is it's very hard to control your housing costs when you're renting. In Australia generally it varies a little bit from state to state, but generally your rent can go up by up to twice a year.

And in Australia there's no cap on that rent. The only affordable places for some people are a very long way out of major cities.

Place matters and there are people who are on quite decent incomes who can't afford to buy where they'd like to live, so they rent.

MANDIE SAMI: Professor Hulse says not only are more people renting, but they're doing so for longer.

KATH HULSE: Just under two million households rent their housing. And of those, a third have rented continuously for more than ten years. It's a long time to be renting. In Australia, many people expect renting to be quite a short-term experience.

They associate it with being young, being a student, before they form a serious relationship, before they get married. But increasingly for Australians, this is becoming a more permanent situation.

And the worrying thing about the research is that there are older renters or middle aged people are still renting, and sometimes for a quite long period. So this is of concern - if people are not choosing to rent but they have to rent because they don't have an alternative.

MANDIE SAMI: She says more attention should be paid to Generation Y - the group most affected by inter-generational inequality.

KATH HULSE: We should be looking at the prospects that people have for owning a home if that's what they want. Or, having a secure place to live and raise their families, which is what many people want. And we need to take it seriously. It's not happening for a lot of people at the moment.

MANDIE SAMI: And Professor Hulse warns the Australian dream of home ownership is dwindling - especially for those under the age of 40.

KATH HULSE: I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed. We know that when people are asked what their aspirations are, their aspiration is to own a home, and that hasn't changed much over a long period.

So if people are not able to achieve that, and that's what they would like, and they have to as I said go to the default option of renting, they're going to be quite disappointed. And I think there are some intergenerational issues coming up around that.

If we have a generation of home owners and Gen-X, Gen-Y who are not able to buy - including when they form relationships, have children - I think that that's an interesting dynamic from a political point of view.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Professor Kath Hulse from the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, ending that report from Mandie Sami.