The continuing rise in property prices and interest rates has not stopped home ownership - but it has increased the level of indebtedness associated with it.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008 Year Book records that the number of established homes financed has grown from 348,000 in 1995 to 681,000 in 2007 - in other words, almost doubled.

But the proportion of households who own their homes outright, without mortgages, declined from 43% to 34%, while the share of those with mortgage debt rose from 28% to 35%. Those figures indicate that total home ownership has fallen from 71% of households to 69% in the past dozen years.

Here?s a clue explaining those changes: the average loan size for first-home buyers was $90,000 in 1995 but is now around $230,000.