The life and death of the Australian permanent building societies

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries permanent building societies have been important providers of housing finance in Australia. Despite their long history Australian building societies have been disappearing at a steady rate since the early 1980s as they have converted into banks or become involved in mergers. The purpose of this paper is to give a background account of the history of Australian building societies and put forward explanations for their past popularity and more recent disappearance from Australian housing finance markets.