The Reserve Bank of Australia has stuck its oar into the argument about migration and the housing market, showing a craving for space by residents during the pandemic created demand for hundreds of thousands of extra homes, without a single plane touching down at Tullamarine or Kingsford Smith airports.

Australia’s average household size was getting smaller long before COVID-19 struck, but after an initial reversal – as children moved back with parents and foreign students left the country – the pandemic supercharged the move towards smaller homes, new central bank research shows.