Even in the prestigious cities of Australia, renting is more expensive than buying.
An analysis of Core Logic real estate data found that buying houses in some high-end areas of Sydney and Melbourne was cheaper than renting.
Sydney`s median rent has barely risen in the past year, but at 583 yuan a week, the cost of renting a house on the north bank of the prestigious area is still higher than that for a mortgage.
Australia`s average rent is 429 yuan a week, while Sydney`s tenants pay 36 percent more, according to data released Thursday by the Core Logic.
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The monthly mortgage repayment for a five hundred and thirty thousand-yuan apartment in Waitara, near the rail line, is 2000 yuan, including 20 percent of down payments. This is $582 less than Sydney`s median monthly rent of 2582 yuan, if the owner is willing to make up for a bedroom.
At around $582 a week, Sydney can rent a three-bedroom apartment in Waitara, a half-hour train ride from downtown, or a one-bedroom apartment in the inner city of Surry Hills, which now costs 2590 yuan a month.
If someone wants to buy a two-bedroom apartment in Sydney for about $ five hundred and thirty thousand, he has to go west to live in a place like Merrylands or Lakemba.
Five hundred thousand yuan is enough to buy a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Melbourne, where rents are much lower than in Sydney.
For four hundred and ninety thousand yuan, you can buy a two-bedroom apartment in St Kilda, Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne.
The monthly supply for homeowners in St Kilda is 1810 yuan, more than $180 less than those renting in less popular urban areas.
Over the past year, Melbourne`s rents have risen 3.1% to 447 yuan a week.
Heidelberg is located 12 kilometers northeast of the city centre, where a two-bedroom apartment costs $450 a week (1993 yuan a month), much more expensive than buying a home in the popular St Kilda.
Rents for Canberra tenants have soared 4.5% over the past year to $536 a week.
However, Hobart, which is booming in the housing market, is Australia`s most brutal city for tenants, with annual rents soaring 10.7 percent to $418 a week.
In the previous fiscal year, rents across Australia rose 1.8% to $429.
Rentals in sub-developed regions were hit even harder, with rents rising 3.1 percent, compared with an average 1.4 percent increase in state-run cities.
Rents in Sydney rose only 0.1%, with high rents causing low yields, CoreLogic said.
It said on Thursday that the slowdown may indicate that rents are already unaffordable, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, while also reflecting a significant increase in the supply of housing and investor buying activity in recent years.
The Australian Reserve Bank`s (RBA) continued to keep interest rates at an all-time low of 1.5 percent this month, as Sydney`s housing market peaked in June last year.
