Sydney rental crisis: Bondi inspection photo shows grim reality
>
Sad photo shows stark reality of Sydney’s rental crisis as desperate tenants spend their weekends queuing and offering hundreds of extras
- Photo shows queue at open rental inspection in Bondi going out the door
- Desperate tenant revealed he’d been house hunting for months without any success
- Others on the community’s Facebook group shared similar difficulties finding a spot
- A woman spent four months searching before moving further away from CBD
<!–
<!–
<!–<!–
<!–
<!–
<!–
Australia’s rental crisis has been exposed again when a frustrated tenant snapped a photo of people crawling from the door of an open house in one of Sydney’s trendiest suburbs.
The photo, taken this week at a rental house in the beachfront suburb of Bondi, showed the line of people winding out the door and down the stairs.
The photographer Edward Dostine took to the Facebook group Bondi Local Loop to vent about the past month looking for a place without any success.
“Is anyone else having trouble getting a rental home?” wrote Mr Dostine.
“I’ve been looking with a friend for over a month now and each inspection has over 10 people and winning applications are over $100 above the asking price. Never seen this bad before.’
This photo from an open inspection in Bondi sums up Sydney’s dire rent crisis, with desperate tenants offering to pay well above asking price
His desperate post prompted other residents of the Eastern Suburbs in the same boat to share similar horror stories.
“Maybe 100 apartments applied for and one went through,” one woman wrote.
Another added: ‘Same problem. More than 15 inspections and many of them much nicer in the photo than in reality. The price is also completely exorbitant.
“We’ve been looking for something for two months and have never seen so many people on inspections. We have already sent four applications and they have all been rejected.’
One woman offered one piece of advice: move further away.
“We were looking for four months, the rental market is the worst I’ve ever seen,” she noted.
“Sorry it’s so hard to search, we moved a little further away and found a great place for a good price.”
Another ‘helpful’ local suggested posting ‘sexy’ photos to increase his chances.
Fellow Sydneysiders shared their own horror stories and advice on how to land a lease (comments on a Facebook community in the photo)
Residential vacancy rates in Sydney fell to a ten-year low of 1.3 percent in August, nearly half the level of a year earlier.
It comes fourteen days later just under $380 a week studio in the same neighborhood attracted more than 100 potential tenants.
Those in attendance described the open inspection as “queuing to enter a nightclub.”
Peak housing body Shelter NSW told Daily Mail Australia that applying for rental housing has become ‘like The Hunger Games’.
The skyrocketing rents and heartbreaking queues resulting from historically low vacancy rates have significantly worsened tenants’ prospects.
Nationally, only 0.9 percent of the properties are vacant, the lowest level in more than 16 years.
In Sydney, the figure is at a record low of 1.3 percent, almost half of the vacancy rate of 2.4 percent in July last year during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Sydneysiders suggested that potential tenants should look further afield from the CBD to find a spot. Pictured is the downtown suburb of Balmain