Country: Australia Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), average interviews per 3 month period April 2007 â May 2021, n=2,674. Base: Australians 14+ with owner occupied home loan. New research from Roy Morgan shows an estimated 677,000 mortgage holders (17.3%) were at risk of ‘mortgage stress’ in the three months to May 2021. This period encompassed the end of the JobKeeper wage subsidy (end of March 2021), low community transmission of COVID-19 and only a few ‘short and sharp’ lockdowns and border closures to deal with outbreaks. This level of mortgage stress is down sharply on a year ago when an estimated 794,000 mortgage holders (19.4%) were at risk during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the three months to May 2020.