Castlemaine is one of the 68 locations across Australia that have a rental vacancy rate less than 1 per cent. There are said to be 600 people actively needing a house in the town yet only 10 homes listed for lease online.
A mum and her 19-year-old son are living in a tent in bushland in Victoria after unsuccessfully searching for 13 months to find a place to rent.In the past year, Shantelle Podhaczky has made a bed in all sorts of places including train stations, and on the loungeroom floors of her friends' houses.
Data from PropTrack shows there are 68 regional cities that have a less-than-1-per-cent rental vacancy rate.As the end of their lease approached, Ms Podhaczky was applying for between 20 and 30 houses a week across regional Victoria and Melbourne's outer suburbs. Ms Podhaczky said the asking price for rentals in Castlemaine was $1,300 a fortnight — $200 more than she gets from Centrelink.Housing data from PropTrack shows places like the Hume and Warrnambool regions in Victoria, and Toowoomba in Queensland, have the lowest rates of available rentals in the country.PropTrack's senior economist Anne Flaherty says outer urban and regional areas are hardest hit by rental shortages as investors sell up.
She said all the state government's planning, housing and rental policies announced in October would help renters, if done properly.However, she said the tight rental market was the underlying condition of the country's rental crisis. "Anecdotally, we hear it would take too much to render compliant to the Tenancy Act. A small minority say they've had a negative experience. Or the house is wrapped up in a family trust."A rental affordability study by Anglicare Australia earlier this year showed the total number of listings in Australia had been about 45,000 a year for three years in a row – 20,000 less each year than what the social service provider says is the typical number of rentals.
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