Australian median rental prices have hit new records, with the average dwelling costing $601 per week or $31,252 annually.
Nationally, rental prices increased 8.3 per cent between January and December 2023, CoreLogic’s latest report found.
It said the increases have averaged 9.1 per cent for the past three calendar years, whereas the annual growth rate in the 2010s was 2 per cent.
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Sydney continues to have the most expensive median rent of $745 per week, a 10.2 per cent annual change.
That was followed by Canberra at $651 per week, Perth at $630 per week, Brisbane at $627 per week and then Darwin at $611.
Rental prices in Melbourne and Adelaide were both $565 per week.
Hobart offered the cheapest rent at $535 per week, and also saw a 3.5 per cent decrease in rental prices between January and December 2023.
Over the same 12-month period, Perth had the most significant growth in rental prices (13.4 per cent) followed by Melbourne (11.1 per cent), then Sydney (10.2 per cent).
CoreLogic’s head of research Eliza Owen said Adelaide had experienced a 7.7 per cent change in rental prices (less in comparison to other cities), making it more affordable than most other cities, except Melbourne and Hobart.
“Since we’ve got these extraordinary migration levels, people empowered by remote work, Adelaide is really becoming one of the more popular capital cities,” she said.
CoreLogic found tenants in Adelaide’s city and east are paying about $613 per week in rent, while the average rent in the south and western suburbs was about $575.
“So really not much relief, no matter where you are in the Adelaide rental market,” Owen said.
Nationally, the highest weekly rent was in Sydney’s northern beaches where tenants are paying $1167, followed by Sydney’s east where the median rent was $1046 per week.
CoreLogic’s report blamed a number of factors for the sharp prices increases, such as fewer people living in share houses, a rapid increase in the national population when international borders reopened post COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of social housing and a “temporary shock to investment housing activity” as interest rates rose.
“Rent value increases have broadly outpaced wage and income rises at the national level, meaning rental affordability has also deteriorated,” the report said.
A separate report found affordable housing has moved beyond many Australians’ reach because the government is subsidising the private market instead of building social housing.
The Everybody’s Home Written Off report shows the federal budget is expected to lose almost a quarter of a trillion dollars to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions between 2010-33.
It argues investor tax breaks over the next decade could build more than half a million social homes, and have outstripped spending on social housing by at least five times.
Further highlighting the disparity, the report says governments spent about $164 per person on public and community housing in 1982. By 2022, the number had shrunk to $61.
The Federal Government is expected to discuss measures to ease the cost of living pressure on Wednesday.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the federal government is determined to hit the ground running two weeks before the first parliament sitting period resumes in February.
“We’re coming together early,” he said in Adelaide on Sunday.
“The prime minister has called his caucus colleagues even though parliament doesn’t commence again for a couple of weeks because we recognise Australians are doing it tough.”
-With AAP