South Australia’s 10,000 vacant homes and where to find them

As the state grapples with a housing crisis, The Sunday Mail can reveal thousands of homes across SA are currently vacant, here’s where to find them.

Thousands of ‘ghost homes’ have been uncovered across South Australia, with new data showing hundreds of vacant properties in the CBD, Fleurieu Peninsula and southern suburbs.

As the state grapples with a housing crisis, The Sunday Mail can reveal there were 10,066 ‘inactive’ homes across the state in September.

The highest number of inactive dwellings were in the Adelaide City Council area with 680 homes sitting vacant, followed by Onkaparinga Council (464) and Alexandrina Council (450).

In Adelaide’s western suburbs, there were 410 inactive homes in the Charles Sturt Council area and 369 vacant dwellings in Port Adelaide Enfield Council.

While in the country, the Yorke Peninsula and Copper Coast council areas had the most inactive homes, with 308 and 234 homes, respectively.

Over 10,000 homes are inactive across South Australia but some experts say not all are suitable for living in, such as Romilly House. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

University of South Australia property and housing economics professor Chris Leishman said one reason some properties may lay vacant could be due to elderly parents moving into care.

“The family keep the property vacant as selling it is a final step and with the population ageing the instances of people moving into care homes and leaving properties vacant for a few years, will only go up,” Prof Leishman said.

“The concentration of older people is actually higher in western and southern suburbs, so it’s suggestive that this is a demographic phenomenon to a certain respect.”

South Australian Council of Social Services chief executive Rebecca Tooher said a vacancy tax – outlined in their 2024/25 budget submission – could be part of a solution.

“A vacancy tax wouldn’t target people who have legitimate reasons for not occupying properties – we understand that people are on holidays or in hospital,” Dr Tooher said.

“Our hope is that it could be used as an incentive for owners to make more properties available for renters and increase the overall supply of housing in our state.

“Solving the housing crisis in SA ultimately requires more than just a vacancy tax. The government has many options available to achieve this, perhaps the most important of these is building more social housing.”

The housing statistics, published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in September as part of a multi-agency data integration project, were cross-referenced with inactive dwelling data from the 2021 Census, data from the Australian Taxation Office and government agencies including Health and Aged Care, Social Services and Services Australia.

Individual household electricity data was also measured as part of the ABS multi-agency data integration project.

Romilly House once housed 35 tenants, it has sat dormant and in disrepair for the past six years. Picture: Help Save South Australia's History from Demolition

Flinders University professor Selina Tually said it was important to understand why housing stock may be vacant, such as whether a house was unsafe for human habitation, or whether it did not satisfy planning and safety regulations.

“It could be that dwellings are sitting vacant because there is a broader redevelopment or revitalisation plan for that stock or the area in which they are located,” prof Tually said.

Planning Minister Nick Champion acknowledged the housing crisis but said the government would keep their election promise that there would be no new taxes.

“As a government we are pulling every lever available to address the housing crisis,” he said.

“Through the Better Housing Future initiative, the government has implemented significant reforms to release record amounts of land, abolish stamp duty for eligible first home buyers, turnaround the long-term decline in public housing, streamline planning approvals, and reform the rental market to deliver new benefits to tenants.”

The State Government last year announced the single largest release of residential land in the state’s history, allowing for at least 23,700 new homes.

Ghost Homes

It’s a ghost home in Adelaide that has been closed since 2017 due to a cockroach infestation, but at its peak it housed 35 tenants.

Romilly House, a state heritage-listed building on the corner of Hackney Rd and North Tce, has sat dormant and in disrepair for the past six years.

The 140-year-old building was initially a hotel, then hosted nightclubs before it became a boarding house which was home to about 35 tenants before its closure.

The building was badly vandalised in 2021, with graffi on the walls, smashed windows and its staircase ripped apart.

Rudi Bodonyi owned the building for more than two decades, but died in 2022 and the property was later sold for $2.8m.

On Whitmore Square, the former Linsell Lodge aged care site owned by the Salvation Army has been dormant since it was relocated in 2005.

The building has been approved for demolition with works underway to remove asbestos.