its imho subtly worse... rich people, corporations, and children of older people who already own homes. There's a _lot_ of the last group, and its dividing society into two large segments with a widening gap in between, based on nothing but luck of who you were born to.

I'm not sure it's dead. It's certainly under pressure, but here in Perth I can find a few hundred properties under $400k, and banks will lend a working couple both on full-time minimum wage over $400k. Yes, they'd have to find a deposit somewhere (though something like keystart can help with lower deposit requirements). Sure, not all of them are houses (a minority are), there are a lot of villas and apartments in there, not all are in the best areas etc. etc.

Perhaps we can say it's on life support here.

Over east may be a different story of course, which is probably why we have so many posts in the Perth subreddit about moving to Perth...

And from what I understand renters have little/no rights or recourse against greedy landlords (i.e. compared to most G7 countries) who can demand rent increases and/or toss out tenants for very little reason.

Same in New Zealand actually. As a longterm resident of Japan it would be cheaper to buy a brand new apartment in the middle of Tokyo than it would some damp hovel in Auckland.

Indeed, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/25/generatio...