It’s a great time to be a landlord, a real estate agent or a rental search platform in Australia. Amid our augmenting rental crisis, sharehouse finder website Flatmates.com.au just recorded its busiest month ever with 212,000 active users on the site in January – the highest ever recorded – as more people seek shared living arrangements.
67,700 new members joined the platform in January – a 22 per cent increase month-on-month.
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The total is six per cent higher than its previous record in last January and Flatmates.com.au community manager Claudia Conley said while January was almost always the busiest month, demand still far outstripped supply almost 100 to one.
“January is the busiest month of the year for shared accommodation, with lots of domestic and international travel across cities and states,” she said in a statement.
“The university semester is about to start, many members are looking to move for new jobs, most leases are renewed at this time of year, and migration is high as people flock to Australia for that quintessential Aussie summer experience.
“Add to this a cost-of-living and rental crisis leading even more people to turn to share accommodation than usual, it’s no surprise that this January has been our busiest month ever.
“We are expecting February to be just as busy; and probably into April.”
Conley said it was good news that the site also saw new property listings rise by 18.8 per cent in the past 12 months. But this is part of a trend of homeowners looking to subsidise their rising mortgage repayments or renters needing to share the load by renting out a spare room amid a cost of living crisis – something both Conley and the former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe have encouraged.
But given Australia’s weak tenancy laws and hefty tax breaks for landlords, this isn’t necessarily a win for renters, nor is it even remotely beginning to cover the need in the market.
“Despite this,” she said, “demand still significantly outweighs supply, with the seeker to lister ratio of many suburbs over 100 to one.”
The alternative? Brave queues of hundreds all vying for sub-par rental properties at inner-city inspections every Saturday.
The most popular suburbs in the country for sharehouse searches were Tamarama and Bronte in Sydney’s east. Tamarama had only one listing in January for 344 people seeking rooms there, while Bronte had four rooms listed in January available to its 844 room seekers.
Clovelly, City of Sydney, Barangaroo, St Peters and Eveleigh were the next most imbalanced suburbs where demand heavily outweighed supply.
In Melbourne, Fitzroy was the least equitable suburb with just 10 rooms listed for the 1738 members looking in the area.
Next were Fitzroy North and Malvern, which had demand-supply ratios of around 100 to one. They were followed by Middle Park, Burnley, Collingwood, Caulfield, Cremorne, Prahran and Hampton.
Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.
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