Rental affordability hits record lows in most capital cities and regions

News data shows rental affordability has plunged to record lows in almost every Australian capital city and region

Transcript

00:00This is the 10th iteration of this report that's come out and it shows that rent affordability

00:07is at record lows across the country.

00:10The authors of the report compare median incomes with median rents to find out which places

00:15are affordable for the average renter, based on the assumption that if you're paying 30%

00:21or more of your income on rent, then rent is unaffordable.

00:26This year was the first time in 10 years that two capital cities in Australia have become

00:31unaffordable for the average renter.

00:34They were Perth and Sydney.

00:35Perth in particular has seen unaffordability really rise since 2020 when the pandemic began.

00:44It has been rapidly unaffordable over the past few years, but particularly in the last

00:51year, rent affordability has dropped by 13%.

00:58Tasmania and the ACT saw affordability increase a little bit, so it's a bit better there for

01:04renters, but that's largely due to Tasmania's economy not doing so well and quite high incomes

01:10on average in the ACT.

01:11So the authors decided that because unaffordability is so dire in some areas for some people,

01:17that they've created this new category called critically unaffordable rents, and that captures

01:22people who are spending 75% or more of their income on rent per week.

01:28That is largely affecting people on job seeker payments and single pensioners, and that really

01:34goes to show or speaks to the lack of public and social housing that we have across the

01:39country, because usually those people would be captured by the system and be put in homes

01:44with the assistance from state and territory governments, but that's just not happening

01:48because our stock is so low, and so those people are having to be pushed into the private

01:54rental market.

01:56John Engler from National Shelter spoke about this new category earlier on News Breakfast.

02:01Check out what he had to say.

02:03So not just severely unaffordable, critically unaffordable.

02:06So getting worse, a new colour, in fact, we've had to introduce to indicate on our heat maps

02:13when somebody's likely to pay more than 75% of their income, that's a new low.

02:18It's coming down to decisions, as we say, cost of living, do they make decisions between

02:22rent or groceries or energy bills?

02:25It's getting to that, as we say, critical level.

02:28What John said there really speaks to how more and more renters are feeling the pinch

02:32when it comes to rent.

02:34We know we've got a cost of living crisis, but I think really going into next year, housing

02:38and renting in particular is really going to be front of mind for voters, and something

02:42the major parties need to keep their eye on.