Shock photo highlights major problem with the housing market – as Aussies struggle to find a rental

A photo of an abandoned two-storey apartment building has highlighted a major problem contributing to the housing crisis as tenants struggle to find a home.

The dilapidated and painted building in Leichhardt, in Sydney’s west, has 12 separate apartments that have been empty for years.

Despite being in a prime location just a stone’s throw from the city’s ‘Little Italy’, the building has fallen into disrepute with boarded up windows and a reinforced fence keeping people out.

Taking to social media platform

Some claimed to have lived near vacant homes for years, while one shared a video of an abandoned home with tall weeds growing in the front yard.

More than 100,000 homes sit empty across Australia as renters struggle to find a home. Disturbing figures show that affordability is at its worst in years.

An image of the Leichhardt building from 2018, when residents still lived there, shows a more tidy property, with many plants in the front garden and even a barbecue and chair on one of the balconies.

According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the building is one of 136,000 properties across the country showing no signs of recent use.

The percentage of homes that are unused – 1.3 percent – ​​is higher than the vacancy rate of rentable homes, which has fallen to the lowest recorded level at just 1.02 percent.

The property sold for more than $3.8 million in July 2018, was abandoned shortly thereafter, and was sold again in an off-market sale in May of this year for an undisclosed amount.

There have also been numerous attempts to demolish the building and rebuild a larger apartment complex, but there have been no updates to the property’s development application since the last sale.

According to ABS data collected in mid-2021, the property would make up about 12 of the 1,157 vacant properties in the Inner West LGA.

The area has a vacancy rate of 1.4 per cent, the third highest in the Sydney area.

New South Wales as a whole has a rate of 1.3 per cent, the same as Tasmania and Queensland, while Victoria and Western and South Australia all have a rate of 1.3.

The complex included twelve apartments while it was still inhabitable at least in 2018, but has since fallen into disrepair and has been sold twice since then.

A video posted to

The ACT has the lowest rate with just 1.2 per cent of homes inactive, while the Northern Territory has the highest rate in the country at 2.4 per cent.

The fact that there are more vacant properties not available for rent than are available is a huge blow to potential tenants who are fighting with each other in a highly competitive rental market.

“Renters faced even tougher conditions in October, with the share of rental properties left vacant falling to the lowest level ever,” said PropTrack economist Anne Flaherty.

Shocking images of a two-storey house in Western Australia that has been abandoned for ‘years’ has left tenants even more confused.

The video posted on

The only sign of life is a note on the window next to the front door that says ‘Dining out’ with an invalid telephone number underneath.

The video attracted hundreds of commenters who shared similar stories of vacant homes around them.

“We were looking for land in an affluent suburb of Brisbane and came across five large houses that were vacant and vacant. It’s a great shame,” one social media user wrote.

A second user claimed that a two-bedroom apartment in Sydney’s Croydon Park has been left empty for the past year after the landlord ‘evicted a single mother to apparently ‘move their children’.

Two users suspected or knew people who were planning to squat vacant buildings with the intention of exercising squatters’ rights and claiming the property.

One user saw no one living in the house despite it being sold twice in three years before he “once saw a gardener appear to open the garage door.” Someone (squatters?) had broken in and spray-painted ‘CCTV’ on the wall. inside’.

Another user, a Brisbane man, claimed to have a “lawyer friend who a few years ago was seriously planning to go into squatter mode on several inner-city Brisbane houses because they would be transferred to him under certain conditions.” .

Although they vary from state to state, the usual conditions for acquiring property through squatters’ rights include living on an open and unattended site for 12 consecutive years, while also proving that you have done so.