If you’ve felt like you can’t find a single place to live in your budget when you doom scroll realestate.com.au, you’re not alone. A new rental report has dropped some alarming stats on what we already knew in the deepest pits of our stomachs: the amount of affordable rental properties available across Australia has basically halved.
The ongoing rental crisis across Australia is in full swing, with the latest PropTrack Market Insight Report revealing that only 17.6 per cent of properties listed on realestate.com.au are going $400 or less as of February 2023.
In March 2020, just as the COVID pandemic began, 42.5 per cent of properties were listed for under $400 a week — more than double what’s currently on offer. These numbers are expected to get worse since online learning has been banned for Chinese international students
Real Estate with Rachel. Gumtree slumlord edition. @Australian Labor Party something needs to be done about this. Does this look like the kind of property that people in Australia should be living in? For $600 per week? Allowing the property/rental market to run wild the way it has, is enabling this profiteering off the desperation of people who need somewhere to live. Surely no one will tent this place, but regardless it is inexcusable behaviour and for $600 per week? The audacity of this person to also request bond AND four weeks in advance on rent at all times. For an outdoor bathroom? For this? Things just keep getting worse out here. All the landlord lovers in my comments can stfu, your time is coming…we’re not going to let this go. People deserve livable standards ESPECIALLY when they’re paying money which then pays the lanlords bills. Get a grip on reality, this is unhinged. #realestatewithrachel#housingcrisisaustralia#rentalcrisisaustralia#greedylandlord#shitrentals#brisbanerental#brisbanerealestate#brisbaneaustralia#slumlord
“The fall in the availability of more affordable rentals and the surging competition for rental stock is creating challenges for those on lower incomes or government support payments as they try to source increasingly scarce rental accommodation.”
Great. Just fucking great.
, meaning now they’ll be forced to try to find homes in this mess of a rental market too.
The numbers are fkn stark, and they’re just as painful when you break them down by city.
In February 2022 — so literally just a year ago — 19.8 per cent of rentals across Sydney were below $400 a week. Literally almost a fifth of all rentals were affordable, at least by Sydney’s standards. By Feb 2023, that number dropped to a pitiful 7.8 per cent.
According to , Business NSW data revealed that an individual who wants to rent within 5km of Sydney’s CBD would need to be earning at least $100,000 to be able to afford it without experiencing housing stress.
Brb, going to cry into my two minute noodles.
It’s not so bad across the rest of NSW, with 21.9 per cent of rental properties this year being below $400 a week, compared to 30.3 per cent in 2022. With the exception of Byron Bay, which actually is more expensive than Sydney’s CBD. The same figures from earlier determined an individual would need to be earning at least $115,000 per year to be able to live in Byron Bay and only use 30 per cent of their income on housing.
In Melbourne, the number of affordable rental properties also halved, yet there are still more than double the affordable rentals than in Sydney. Maybe I need to move states.
In Feb 2022, 43.5 per cent of rentals were going for less than $400 a week. That number has dropped to 20 per cent.
For the rest of the state, the percentage of homes going for below $400 a week is 37.9 per cent, compared to 2022’s 51.5 per cent.
Rentals below $400 a week in Brisbane dropped from 28.3 per cent to 13 per cent from February 2022 to February 2023. Across the state, those numbers fell from 35.4 per cent to 21.3 per cent.
As you may have seen from our many articles about it, the state of real estate agents in Queensland is also particularly dire because many of them are money-hungry goblins who have no regard for tenants’ housing rights.
Aside from stories of Queensland real estate agents , or , there’s also the issue of rental bidding.
Rental bidding is banned in the state, as it is in others too, but the law is a shitty one because it doesn’t prevent tenants from offering more cash. So while a real estate agent can’t tell a tenant to offer more rent, they can certainly say or do things that might encourage a tenant to do so on their own.
It’s an issue NSW is facing too, with . Did this stop renters from offering more rent than advertised anyway? No, because we all know that is an expectation upon us during this competitive time.
And until that’s addressed, the legal grey area will just allow rental bidding to evolve into other practices that are just as shady but legal.
37.8 per cent of rental properties were below $400 a week in Adelaide in February 2022, but in February 2023 this number had dropped to 18.3 per cent.
For the rest of the state, the numbers are actually relatively pretty good. Emphasis on relatively.
In Feb 2022, 84 per cent of rental properties in SA were for less than $400 a week. In February 2023, 70.2 per cent of them were. That’s not so bad.
Aaaaand we’re back to shit numbers.
Affordable rents of less than $400 have halved in Perth during the last year, dropping from 32 per cent of rentals to 15.4 per cent.
In the rest of WA, 42.7 per cent of rentals used to be affordable in 2022. In Feb 2023, only 21.2 per cent are.
Only 12 per cent of rental properties in Hobart are considered affordable in Feb 2023, compared to 20.3 per cent in Feb 2022.
For wider Tasmania, 34.1 per cent of rental properties are going for less than $400 in Feb 2023, compared to 49.9 per cent in Feb 2022. I honestly can’t fathom half of all properties going for so cheap, it feels like a dream.
Rentals below $400 per week were at 8.8 per cent in Darwin for February 2023 compared with 15.7 per cent in February 2022.
In the rest of the NT, 26.9 per cent of rental properties were below $400 per week in Feb 2023 compared with 34.8 per cent in February 2022.
If you thought Sydney’s numbers would be the most dire on this list, think again!
Just 1.9 per cent of rentals in the ACT went for less than $400 a week in Feb 2023, compared to 6 per cent in Feb 2022.
ACT really said no poors allowed, huh?
PropTrack economic research director and report author warned that it doesn’t look like there’ll be an affordable rental properties comeback any time soon.
“Demand for rentals is far outstripping supply, pushing weekly rents higher and the vacancy rate lower,” he said, per news.com.au.
“With demand for rentals intensifying, we see no reprieve for tenants in the coming months.
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