Tasmanian rental market is the toughest in Australia

Renters in a quaint Australian town are doing their best to try to find a home in a “brutal” market that shows no signs of improving.

Hobart has been the most unaffordable city in the country to rent since 2018, and it had an incredibly low vacancy rate of 0.5 per cent this year.

Tenants feel “hopeless” and “depressed” after spending months dealing with rejected applications and battling crowds of “40 to 50” showings.

Disabled worker Angus Harrold happened to get a rental house in Rosetta, north of Hobart’s central business district, this month.

I was looking with friends after going on 30-40 tours over four months as well as virtual tours.

Mr Harrold, 24, said he saw people at lunchtime lining up to inspect the house, with a man jumping out of a St John’s ambulance in his uniform to inspect the property.

“We ended up getting a place simply through someone who knew someone else who was looking to rent the house,” Mr Harrold told Daily Mail Australia.

She said her mother’s neighbor worked with a landlord who had put up a social media post looking for tenants.

The neighbor then spoke highly of him and his friends, so “the timing was really good.”

We were four guys trying to get a place and we’re all in our late 20s, we actually had a few places we passed inspections and we were told straight up, “Look, you’re not going to get it.” .

‘Specifically because there is such a stigma about [a group of male tenants] partying and being quite destructive, which is not what we do, we’re quite nerdy, we just play video games.’

Harrold said the process was difficult and made him and his friends wonder what they were doing wrong.

“We had our finances and savings, but we kept getting hit and it was like ‘is it our personality, are we acting too weird, don’t we look like that?’

It was pretty depressing.

He said he had to think of other ways to find a house, including bombarding real estate agents with questions about other available places when an offer on a property was unsuccessful.

‘{We had to avoid being]brand loyal, that’s what we found, we had the most opportunity literally checking every single person, checking Gumtree, checking Facebook, Hobart Buy and Sell,” he said.

Ben Bartl, senior counsel for the Tasmanian Tenants Association, told Daily Mail Australia that some people are offering rent payments of three, six and 12 months in advance to get a place to live in Tasmania.

“A landlord can’t ask for more than a month’s rent in advance, but if a prospective tenant offers it, it gives them an advantage,” Bartl said.

Bartl said developers and landlords in Tasmania can only rent a residence for a fixed price, but that doesn’t stop tenants from bidding higher.

“Many tenants feel they need to offer more for the property than is advertised to stay ahead of the crowd,” Mr. Bartl said.

“In the greater Hobart area, the vacancy rate is 0.5 per cent, which is incredibly low and means there are plenty of renters looking for affordable rental properties, but there just isn’t a supply.

“Tasmanian workers earn 20 per cent less compared to the rest of the country, but it is more expensive to rent than Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.”

It added that the state’s median rent has risen from $300 to $450 for a three-bedroom house in the past five years, with the same residence in the Hobart CBD rising 33 per cent to $600 in 2022.

Incomes and pensions have not increased, leaving vulnerable groups, including the low-income and single parents, in the lurch.

Single father Steven Duggan has been forced to couch surf as he waits for an affordable rental in Hobart for himself and his American Staffy.

“I’m a guy who doesn’t really show his emotions, but I’ve cried a lot lately, I feel like shit, helpless and hopeless,” he told Daily Mail Australia.

The building maintenance professional said he has been looking since mid-September and has lost count of how many properties he has seen.

He also said the price of rent is a “big problem” on his own, since he’s competing with others who have two or three incomes and has to stick to a budget of $450 a week.

“It’s painful not having my own house and being able to feel safe and have my son and our dog in one place, it really sucks and hurts,” the 34-year-old said.

“I’m still struggling to get somewhere and it really fills me with emotions and my relationship with my son, it’s all on my mind all day and night.”

He hasn’t been able to have his son, his ‘best friend’, on the weekends and he misses him. She also has no family in the area to rely on leaving him to resort to the couch with friends.

“I feel like a burden and a pain for the people who are helping me and this help will not always be there, I can only stay for a while in the places of my colleagues,” he said.

Cancer survivor Bruce Lund, 65, also faces a bleak outlook after he was served with an eviction notice from his Hobart home for seven days late in paying rent.

He has to be away on December 29 and is ‘out of it’ about finding a place in time.

Mr. Lund, a government-supported handyman, shares custody with his 10-year-old son, Heath.

“I can’t live in a tent with a 10-year-old boy,” he said.

“I’ve been out of it, struggling to eat, sleep, chronically depressed, my son keeps me alive.”

Mr. Lund’s health problems, including squamous cell carcinoma, a common skin cancer, have made earning a salary nearly impossible.

The former avid surfer said he used to pay $245 a week six years ago for his two-bedroom house, but the price has risen to $385.

“Rents in Hobart have been ridiculous, there are a few places around but they are really expensive,” he said.

Mr. Bartl said tenants can excel if they have written references from former landlords or agencies on hand when they go for inspections.

‘[It] it means the real estate agent won’t have to look for a reference and you can show that you have a good rental history,” he said.

“If you’ve kept a rental in good condition and you’ve paid your rent on time and get paid regularly, it means you have a better chance of getting the property.”