SOPHIE SAVILLE, RENTER: So we were paying $710 a week. They wanted to put up to $890 a week.
AKSHAT SETH, RENTER: I’m currently paying $670 a week, my rent is going to go up to $850 per week.
JACK BUTLER, RENTER: So our rent is $680 a week. It’s going up to $780.
TIKTOK VIDEO: I don’t even know what’s happening with these rental prices in Sydney right now.
TIKTOK VIDEO: The Australian rental market is in crisis.
PATRICK BEGLEY, REPORTER: In Australia’s capital cities, tenants have been hit with the biggest rent increases on record.
TIKTOK VIDEO: What a start to my weekend. This is Sydney, what’s going on man.
TIKTOK VIDEO: A $350 per week rental increase.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Before the pandemic, rents were rising on about 25 per cent of properties each year in the capital cities.
That’s now jumped to nearly 75 per cent.
The increases are being blamed on a whole lot of different factors, but we wanted to find out how renters are coping.
JACK BUTLER: Essentially fallen off its hinges, it’s kind of rotting through.
Things like the gutter rusting, you would assume might be a priority and then this area is like our entrance hallway where the mould damage is really visible.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Jack Butler has lived in this house in Sydney’s inner-west for the past three years. He’s dealt with ongoing problems like mould but says as a renter, he generally tries to lay low.
JACK BUTLER: Historically, I felt that in a lot of Sydney rentals, if you don’t cause too much fuss with the landlord, that’s a way of ensuring your rent doesn’t increase significantly and that just doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Jack was expecting a rent increase but in the face of a 15 per cent jump, he and his partner Tess may abandon the rental market altogether, by downsizing into an apartment further out.
TESS: At any given moment, we can just be uprooted and moved out or rental increases can go up a significant amount and it’s a shame because this is our home.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Inner-city Sydney renter Sophie Saville offered to pay $20 a week more than the asking price to secure her apartment a year ago.
SOPHIE SAVILLE: Once we got it, I was yeah, over the moon, obviously and I didn’t have to be out there in the bin fire of the rental market.
PATRICK BEGLEY: But eight months into her 12-month lease, she was given notice that her rent would go up 25 per cent if she wanted to renew.
SOPHIE SAVILLE: We were also quite shocked because we had offered more, we didn’t expect such a massive increase, but we were able to negotiate to $850 which is still a 20 per cent increase.
This is my bedroom.
PATRICK BEGLEY: To cover that, they had to find a third person to move into what was meant to be a two-tenant household.
SOPHIE SAVILLE: In many ways, like, the situation we have is not great. We’ve made it work for us and we’re really fortunate that we’ve made it work for us but also, we’ve done it kind of like illegally.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Akshat Seth is also renting in the inner-city but today he’s looking for cheaper options in Western Sydney.
AKSHAT SETH: It’s not a bad house, it’s a decent house, small bedrooms though.
PATRICK BEGLEY: His days off are filled with house inspections after he received notice of a 26 per cent rent increase.
AKSHAT SETH: It is listed at about $700 per week. So I’ve got about four lined up today, and for the weekend, got another 10.
I think the rental market in Sydney at the moment is really chaotic.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Net migration is set to increase by 400,000 people this financial year. Politicians are arguing about how the housing market will absorb the increase, while migrants like Akshat are already struggling to find affordable properties.
AKSHAT SETH: It wasn’t this bad even a couple of years ago. It’s only in the last year, year and a half that the situation has become this bad.
EDDIE DILLEEN, PROPERTY INVESTOR: Back to property number eight, this was literally probably at the around two-year mark.
PATRICK BEGLEY: On the other side of the market, investor Eddie Dilleen is building a rental empire.
EDDIE DILLEEN: I got very passionate about property investing from an extremely young age. Believe it or not I actually grew up with a single mother on a pension in housing commission, so literally started from the bottom.
Houses, duplexes, townhouses – started off with two-bedroom unit.
So I own 78 properties in total, and I rent out 77 properties that are rented for less than what I could be getting.
PATRICK BEGLEY: The 31-year-old says he has put up rents by 10 to 15 per cent on average in the last year.
He says he could charge more but doesn’t want to risk vacancies, and that interest rate rises haven’t put pressure on him so far.
If those interest rate increases, though, haven’t affected you, why put rents up?
EDDIE DILLEEN: So with the rents, they again, like these rents mainly have only gone up because the property went vacant. Like all those ones, when the property went vacant, as an example, they like the market was already at that price point.
It’s a family of six people because it is obviously a six-bedroom house.
PATRICK BEGLEY: He’s also put up the rent up on existing tenants, in properties like this one, which has gone up by $80 a week.
EDDIE DILLEEN: You could potentially put like a duplex on it or redevelop it down the track.
We’re right now in Western Sydney in South Wentworthville, around like Parramatta. I picked up this property about five years ago. Rented at $730 per week, that’s less than what I could be getting as well, but they’re really good tenants. So want to keep them happy and keep them in there. Have a win win situation for everybody.
PATRICK BEGLEY: Just how much landlords should be able to raise rent has become a political battle.
ADAM BANDT, GREENS LEADER: With a fully-fledged rental crisis gripping millions of people around the country who need help right now.
PATRICK BEGLEY: The Greens are pushing for rent freezes, but the Federal Labor Government says that’s not a matter for the Commonwealth.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: One of the things that I won’t do, won’t do is promise absolute pixie dust.
PATRICK BEGLEY: New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has ruled out rent freezes or caps on increases.
CHRIS MINNS: Every bit of international research and most economists agree that if you pursue that and do it at scale, you’ll put massive pressure on supply.
PATRICK BEGLEY: The Premier has ordered ministers to urgently identify land that can be rezoned for housing but as governments look for long-term policy solutions, renters say they need interventions now.
SOPHIE SAVILLE: There’s got to be something they have to do because the pressure is like it’s mounting, and there seems to be no way out.