Housing has become a dream for investors and a nightmare for those struggling to get a slice of the pie. We find ourselves increasingly mired in a debt trap at both an individual and economy-wide level. 

This is Housing Hostages; a five-part series from ABC News Daily. With the help of ABC business editor Michael Janda, we’ll get to the heart of the housing crisis and explain why we’re all hostage to housing. 

Imagine owning dozens of properties at once. In this episode, investing expert Margaret Lomas explains how climbing the property ladder over decades delivered her housing and financial security. We meet desperate first home buyers and explain why emulating Margaret’s property success is now impossible. 

In this series, we’ll scrutinise the possible culprits for this crisis and look at how our housing fortunes influence everything from birth rates to retirement plans. Is it time for the housing bubble to burst and what lessons are there from overseas about what happens next?

Finally, we examine the supply solution that so many vested interests reach for and ask; what really needs to be done to boost the supply of housing and dampen demand for it, to try to make things just a little bit better?