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Rents are about to skyrocket, with ‘most landlords’ raising prices by ‘5 per cent’ within weeks, as 50,000 Chinese students rush to Australia after online study was banned .
China announced the snap ruling on Saturday, banning online study with foreign universities, including those in Australia, weeks before classes start.
For their degrees to be recognized in the communist state, students must now study in person at foreign universities, rather than online as they had done since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This means around 50,000 more people will compete with locals for rental properties in Australia in a few weeks, sending prices skyrocketing, especially in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
“Most landlords will be looking to raise the rent,” said Cameron Kusher, of real estate advertising group REA.
Students are shown lining up to view a rental property, and prices will skyrocket in a few weeks.
“Now, obviously, some people will be able to handle that increase in rent (but) others won’t,” he said. 7News.
Snaggling city center apartments in Australia’s most popular destinations for Chinese students will be particularly difficult, and the offer is likely to be much more common.
“Many of the students who have come from abroad are relatively wealthy, so they can pay higher prices for these properties than local students,” Kusher said.
Phil Honeywood of the Australian International Education Association said his organization was “caught off guard” by the suddenness of the Chinese ruling.
“We expected a longer transition period,” he said.
Honeywood said China’s past policy of allowing families to have only one child is also a major factor in the upcoming rental property shortage.
“We found that Chinese students, who come from one-child families, like to have their own apartment,” he said.
Students are pictured at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Rental prices will skyrocket with the sudden influx of 50,000 Chinese students to Australia.
Melbourne and Brisbane will also see large numbers of Chinese students arriving in a few weeks. In the photo, the University of Melbourne.
The sudden and unexpected influx of 50,000 more people looking to rent adds to what had already become an Australia-wide rental crisis over the last 12 months.
Nationwide, rents rose 6.7 percent to an average of $495 a week in 2022, but the problem was far worse in capital cities.
In cities like Melbourne and Sydney, increased post-Covid demand for fewer properties saw unit rents rise 9.3%, while houses rose 8.3%.
Kent Lardner, founder of Suburbtrends, said the return of Chinese students is likely to make competition for apartments and houses “pretty fierce.”
“I expect to see rent increases of at least 5 percent in the next four weeks,” he told the Australian Financial Review.
Lardner said vacancies “will quickly drop to less than 1 percent in most suburbs.”
Karen Zhang is one of the Chinese students shocked by her country’s sudden decision that people had to return to face-to-face learning.
He previously studied finance online with the University of New South Wales in Sydney from his home in the Guangdong province of China.
But now she is desperate to get to Australia before classes start on February 20 to finish her last semester of studies.
Your biggest problem will be finding a place to live.
‘My life plans have been disrupted… I was planning to go to a city (in China) to work as an intern, and the offer already came to me and I found accommodation there.
“Now I have to cancel everything and make arrangements to return to Australia immediately,” he told the abc.
In capital cities, in 2022, unit rents increased 9.3%, while housing rose 8.3%.
The Education Department said it welcomed the return of Chinese students to Australia and that the education and home affairs ministers were working with universities to address the “short-term logistical issues” of the sudden change.
Melbourne immigration agent Kirk Yan said student visa applications have increased since the order was issued.
“In the long run, I think it’s a good sign that the international student market is entering the post-pandemic era,” he said.
Airlines flying from China to Australia are also struggling to cope with the sudden high demand for flights.
They have been inundated with calls from students desperate to get on already packed planes.