A landlord in their 70s who has seen the highs and lows of the housing market over the last 35 years, says owners are "stretched just as thin" as tenants in the current property crisis.
"I've seen it all, there's not much I haven't seen," the Cessnock resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
"Until you've seen the other side you have no idea how weighted towards renters property laws are, so much if this continues there'll be even less or no private rentals," they said.
The owner purchased their first property in London in the 1990s and now owns seven properties across Cessnock, Muswellbrook and Sydney.
"I got a unit quite close to London to the centre with four bedrooms and I rented out three bedrooms, that's how I started," they said.
While they no longer have any mortgages, they said they feel for property owners who are struggling to keep up with mortgage repayments as interest rates continue to rise.
"The average mortgage of around $700,000 has gone up $1700 a month - how are owners - if they're not allowed to put rent up - supposed to cover all that?
"I'm not struggling anymore because I've done it for so long, but it's worse for people with mortgages."
Mortgage holders were struck with another interest rate hike in May, after just a month of relief.
The 0.25 percentage point increase from the Reserve Bank of Australia brings the cash rate to 3.85 per cent, its highest level since April 2012, and further tightening has not been ruled out.
For mortgage holders, the 11 rate rises since May 2022 have driven repayments through the roof.
RateCity analysis shows the hiking cycle has added $1048 to total repayments on a $500,000 debt.
"Rent increases to mortgage increase - there's no comparison," the landlord said.
They said between insurance, rates, maintenance and land tax, owners were in a "much worse situation than tenants".
"You can't expect owners to keep rent down when it costs us so much, we can't go poof and it comes out of the air.
"Don't blame the landlord, blame the council, the government, the insurance. Rents have hardly gone up in the last five years, now it's probably catch up time," they said.
Apple Property Management principal Christopher Morgan said strata levies had increased 30 per cent causing rent spikes.
"Property insurance has gone up so much with inflation that now all the levies have just completely skyrocketed," he said.
Mr Morgan owns two investment properties in Singleton and East Maitland and said he had gone from paying $400 per quarter in levies on one property to $900.
"It's a really big jump. My place at Singleton was $420 per week and now it will be $460 because my mortgage payment just went from $1300 to $1600," he said.
He said NSW legislation states rents can only go up once per year and in the last six weeks the tenants that he dealt with had a rent increase of 10 per cent.
"Those adjustments kind of bought the rent returns into line with where landlords mortgage payments are," he said.
He said if landlords didn't increase rent, the alternative was to sell the property.
"But then you don't have a home, you have to find somewhere else to live and go back into the rental market," he said.
"Landlords get scared about putting rents up because they don't want to upset good tenants, and that's a really nice thing of them to do but they causing a real big disadvantage.
"There is just so much competition out there that I have people on the phone in tears, because they've got nowhere to go," he said.
Mr Morgan said landlords need to make decisions that will best benefit them and hoped to see some relief in the market soon.
"I would hope that the market kind of gets back into a better situation where investors can start coming in the government things to make it a bit easier for them," he said.
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