Press Releases
Mortgage & Estate Realisation Company in the media
Is Australia facing a rental crisis?
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Are rents in Australia rising too fast? Is there a problem finding affordable, quality rental accomodation?
There's been talk about inaccuracies in media reports of an impending rental crisis, but there is no doubt that most property analysts and economists are predicting rent rises in the coming year.
But is it going to be a bloodbath? Will rent increases strain households, or are people wealthy enough to afford to cough up more money to their landlords? Should we worry that low-income groups will suffer the most -- and is it humane to allow property markets to "correct" at the expense of the poorest people in our cities?
Robin Matters from Mortgage and Estate Realisations says rents have to rise, as they have been cheap for the last decade in comparison to house prices and wages -- "Between 1996 and 2006, rents increased by 60%, wages increased by 80% yet house prices went up by 195%," he says. Effectively, renters have been the winners during the massive property price boom of the last decade.
But BIS Shrapnel senior analyst Jason Anderson says while "rental crisis" is a loaded term, there have already been steep rent rises in the inner city areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane that will ripple out to affect most suburbs in most Australian cities.
Macquarie Bank's head of property research Rod Cornish hates the term "rental crisis", which he believes applied to Sydney back in 1986-1987 when rent increases of up to 60% in one year hurt families.
"Rents have been rising for a few years and, yes, rents will be rising for the next two or three years -- I can see that for some people, it will be a lot harder and I don't want to downplay that, but is that a crisis?"
Robin Matters
from Mortgage and Estate Realisations says rents have to rise, as they have been cheap for the last decade in comparison to house prices and wages
... effectively, renters have been the winners during the massive property price boom of the last decade.