Cameron Norris, 30, lives in a four-bedroom home on a quiet street in Dalyellup, just south of Bunbury in WA.
The beach is a short walk away and the local school is nearby – this is particularly important as Cameron and his wife are raising four young kids, aged 2, 6, 7 and 8.
They also have a dog and a cat.
"We currently pay $400 a week rent," Cameron said.
"The owners were nice enough to drop $20 off the rent at the start of 2020 due to us having a few issues with our child, which meant having to spend time in Perth.
"We understand that in today's market they could fetch a lot more."
Will rents rise as rates rise?
Economists agree as the Reserve Bank raises interest rates, renters will likely cop higher rents.
Why?
Because landlords who have not yet paid off the cost of their mortgage will pass on their higher monthly repayments to their tenants in the form of higher rent.
"Basically, rate rises will increase pressure on renters," said NAB's chief economist Alan Oster.
"Not enough to crunch them but investors will want to try to offset the impact of rate rises on their cash flow."
Impact Economics Lead Economist Angela Jackson agreed.
"[We are] already seeing very tight rental market nationally that is likely to result in higher rents in the year ahead, with big increases already being experienced in regional areas," she said.
"While renters are not directly impacted by rate rises, [it] may lead landlords to increase rents to recoup higher interest costs."
Renters were already feeling the pinch
Cameron's lease expires at the end of August and the owners are selling the property, so they have to move out.
Ideally, Cameron wants to find another four-bedroom house, but he's applying for smaller places too because a three-bedroom house is closer to the price they're paying now – and it's a competitive market.
"There are so many people currently looking for rentals," Cameron said.
"We can apply for a house first thing in the morning and still be the 200th applicant!
"If we are unable to obtain a rental, our last resort will be moving into my parents' house."
The unstable nature of renting is hard
In Victoria, Clare MacDonald, 45, and her partner have moved twice in as many years — during a global pandemic and between lockdowns.
Rental prices have pushed Clare and her partner further and further from the inner city.
They managed to secure a house to rent in Laverton, a suburb in Melbourne's south-west, which had extra rooms to convert into home offices as they both work from home.
But it wasn't easy.
"While looking for the current place, we found a lot of the properties on the market were in a poor condition and overpriced, especially if the location was in demand," she said.
They were living in nearby Altona just prior, and "one house we inspected had holes in the walls and evidence of mice."
"I would be happy to rent long-term if it wasn't so unstable and expensive," Clare said.
"I can afford to rent where we are at present but not to keep moving, especially as I am getting older it gets more stressful and demanding."
So just how much could renters be slugged?
"It will depend — obviously some landlords won't have debt on rental properties, some will have fixed interest rates and some variable," Dr Jackson said.
"But combined with a tight market, there won't be much to stop them passing on the rise."
While RMIT senior lecturer Leonora Risse makes the point that higher interest rates are likely to make borrowing harder for more first home buyers, adding to existing demand for rental properties, thereby pushing up rents.
"For prospective home buyers trying to get into the housing market, a rate hike could make it tougher for them and they'll have to keep renting for longer," she said.
"This means they will continue to add to demand for rental properties, keeping rental rates high."
Should renters just buy instead?
Cameron went to the bank recently to enquire about a home loan.
The banker told him that he didn't earn enough money to be approved for the loan, and needed to earn at least $20,000 more per annum to meet the requirements.
"I told them I paid $1,600 a month in rent so I could afford $1,000 [monthly mortgage repayments], but they told me that didn't matter because the computer told me I couldn't afford it," he said.
"I would love to purchase my own home, but I feel that I would need to work fly-in fly-out to have any chance of doing this.
"With a young family, I would prefer not to have to leave them."
Clare expects that things won't get better for renters, and prices will keep on rising.
"I feel that home ownership or moving in with family is the only way out," she said.
"It takes forever to save a deposit and then pay off a mortgage."
The rental crisis is complex, but it can be solved
Kate Mills, CEO of the Property Industry Foundation, says that there's a rental crisis across Australia alongside issues with supply.
"Initially, $100 a month isn't going to hurt people too much," Mills said.
But that's the situation for many existing renters.
"There are 144,000 people in Australia who do not have a safe and secure place to sleep," she said.
"So for people who cannot even think about getting onto that rental level, this is going to be terrible.
"Now, I completely understand you've got to get inflation under control and there are not a lot of tools to do it … you need that compression," she said of the RBA lifting interest rates.
"But I'm looking at what the government could do to help those right at the bottom, particularly around the Commonwealth rental assistance.
"And I accept that people in the middle – like myself – are going to have to take that squeeze."
