Australia's soaring housing prices are putting pressure on the rental market, forcing many low-income people to choose to live in the suburbs and many potential buyers saving down payments.
The Rental Affordability Index, which is published every six months, compares household income to rental prices across Australia.
The latest Rental Affordability Index has been released. While affordability is relatively stable in some parts of Australia, many pensioners and working families are already unable to afford rental prices in all metropolitan areas, according to the authors of the latest report.
For the vast majority of tenants, Sydney and Hobart are Australia's most affordable cities in the country. At the same time, housing affordability is relatively high in Perth and Melbourne.
National Shelter is one of the three organizations behind the latest report. According to Adrian Pisarski of National Shelter, high housing prices are hitting a broad spectrum of tenants.
"many frustrated tenants don't have the money to buy their own homes. They basically have two options, one is to rent a cheaper house in a more remote place, the other is to rent a house where they want to, but they have to bear a higher rental price than they can really afford. "
In addition, Adrian Pisarski says many low-income families now spend as much as 70 percent of their income on paying rent.
If the cost of housing exceeds 30 percent of the net income of low-income families, the report says, it will affect their ability to pay for other necessary living expenses, such as food, water, electricity and transportation.
As you may already know, this year's federal budget has not significantly increased funding for social housing and homelessness services. There has also been no increase in funding for rental aid-to help low-income tenants in the private rental market.
Much of Australia's rent affordability has not improved, but it has not been worse than before, except Sydney and Hobart, according to the latest release of Rental Affordability Index.
Melbourne's affordability has not been reduced compared to Sydney, which is good news. But even without a drop, Melbourne's home is still unaffordable for many, especially for low-income people.
In contrast, Perth's housing affordability in the past few years is very high. Since the mining boom receded, many people have left, Burns housing pressure has been reduced, rent affordability has been a lot higher.
The group behind Rental Affordability Index has released an interactive map that allows tenants to enter their income and look for places they can afford to live in Australia on the basis of their income.
In addition, Rental Affordability Index found that urban housing prices are high, moving to rural areas is not necessarily a viable solution, after all, rural areas of low wages, some families will even pay 19 per cent of the income to pay rent.