Freya O'Connell has a full-time job and her own small business, yet she can't find a place to live in Geelong's overwhelmed rental market.
Three weeks ago, Ms O'Connell was told she had until the end of February to move out of her Mount Duneed home because her landlords would be moving into the property.
Since then she has unsuccessfully applied for more than a dozen rentals, and had two private applications rejected after competing tenants offered to pay higher rent to secure the homes.
Geelong's record rental unaffordability has left Ms O'Connell facing a "last resort" of moving in with her partner of one year, despite his current home having barely enough room for the couple, a child and two dogs.
"It's sort of resorting to a plan that we weren't going to yet, because there's no other option," Ms O'Connell said. "We were going to wait until we could get something bigger."
Ms O'Connell said renters such as herself were being left "no other choice" but to make difficult decisions, such as squeezing into undersized homes or offering to pay above advertised rental prices – despite those prices already sitting at record levels.
"It's just extremely overwhelming and hard to find one, especially within budget," she said.
"I can't offer more because it will go into half my wage then. So it's sort of a lose-lose, and there's no way around it."
Ms O'Connell does not blame her landlords for her situation, as they had given her some warning of their plans to move back in, and they were likely facing the pinch of increasing interest rates and costs of living.
"It's not on them, it's just a situation that sucks all round," she said.
There's a house just a couple of streets down from Freya, built on the ever-expanding cusp of the Armstrong Creek growth area, which embodies the city's stark rental crisis.
Desperate renters signing up to unfinished homes
A local real estate agency has already signed up renters to the four-bedroom brick and weatherboard home, despite it effectively still being under construction.
The building itself is almost finished – with minor touches to be knocked off indoors – but the landscaping is currently mud, clay and builders rubble, fences are yet to be erected and wires and pipes hang out of some sections of the building where appliances will be fitted.
Prospective renters this month trudged through the mud front lawn of the property at an open for inspection, with a dozen pairs of muddy shoes at the doorstep illustrating the demand in Geelong's current rental market.
Despite the property not being finished, it took about seven days for renters to sign up.
It's becoming more common to list houses before landlords had received the keys from builders, Avenue Five Director of property management Elisha Jackman said.
"We're showing the homes before they've even been fenced and landscaped and we have tenants lined up ready to go for when the handover happens," Ms Jackman said.
"I haven't really ever dealt with that before."
"The demand is definitely outweighing the supply, which unfortunately for renters looking at the moment, will continue — because investors as we know have not been buying and building new homes at the rate in which they were pre-interest rate rises about 12 months ago."
Ms Jackman said she and other property managers "really feel for any unsuccessful renters when they miss out", and worked directly with rent hunters to help them find suitable properties.
Unaffordability is at record level, but is likely to get worse
The most recent Victorian Rental Report revealed the rental crisis hit an unprecedented level in the September 2022 quarter, with non-metro municipalities facing record-breaking rental prices.
Of the state's 48 regional and rural Local Government Areas, 30 posted their lowest-ever rental affordability rate in the latest data.
The overall non-metro affordability rate dropped to a record low of 21.5 per cent – about half the rate recorded just two years earlier in the September 2020 quarter (41.9 per cent).
The City of Greater Geelong's rental affordability rate fell to a record low of 6.8 per cent in the data, almost in line with the overall metro rate of just 6.1 per cent.
Rental affordability is calculated as the rent paid for a letting falling under 30 per cent of the gross income for low-income households.
Despite the stark figures, experts warn the worst is yet to come for the regions.
"You'll see this ripple of this rental stress sort of spreading across regional Victoria over the next six to twelve months unfortunately," Regional Australia Institute chief economist Kim Houghton said.
"Demand moves fairly quickly, but supply in these circumstances moves very slowly."
Trade labour is short and materials are in tight supply, Ms Houghton said.
"In Australia over the last decade we have not been preparing for an above average sort of regional growth, and what we've seen in the last couple of years is definitely above average interest in living regionally," she said.
Families are uprooting because they can't afford to stay
Tenants Victoria chief executive Jennifer Beveridge said it was particularly concerning people in country areas were being priced out of their own communities due to rising rental prices.
"We're hearing lots of stories from people who have connections to their community — whose kids might attend the school, who work in the community, families and friends live there — and they're no longer able to live in those areas they've called home for a long time," Ms Beveridge said.
"There are graphs, there are numbers, but this is a very real human experience."
While there's no quick fix to the crisis, Tenants Victoria hopes the state government will ensure the upcoming Commonwealth Games creates a "housing legacy" in the regions where infrastructure is being built, and that a "fairness formula" could be introduced to ensure rent increases are kept low.
