In one in 10 suburbs and towns across the country, repayments are less than $200 a week higher than rent, for the typical property. In some suburbs, they are actually cheaper.
I hope someone here who is renting can find a place of their own.
You can’t directly compare renting and mortgaging. A few differences:
What you have after (nominally) 30 years:
- Renting: nothing.
- Owning: secure rent-free accomodation. Can work less and do more of what you enjoy.
Other ongoing costs:
- Renting: moving house every ~1-5 years.
- Owning: building insurance, council rates, water supply, (sometimes body corp fees); (total ~$50-$200/week depending on bushfire/flood risk).
If you’re a keen gardener:
- Renting: time and costs to rebuild then restore to original every time you’re evicted. Uncertain planning timeframes.
- Owning: Go ahead and plant that orchard and have excellent fruit and nuts for the next 30-60 years.
That’s not the full picture.
When a person owns a home they have other costs, not just possible mortgage payments. There are rates, insurance, and maintenance. All these together can add up to tens of thousands a year.
I know that Australia is totally different but as a European is crazy to me that I spend around 500€ a year for all the above and you spend tens of thousands
High rents trap people.
It’s immediately noticeable that the table is very regional/remote heavy, I wonder what percentage of those properties are owned by people living in cities?
It’s also affected by Universities where there is high demand for rental because of all the students.
For example, suburbs in Vic where renting is more expensive than buying include Melbourne (with RMIT and VU campuses), Carlton (Melb Uni and RMIT), Travancore (near the teaching hospitals, Melb Uni and RMIT Brunswick), and Notting Hill (Monash and Deakin).
I think a lot of those regional/remote ones are skewed by FiFo workers in the mining sector.
Probably a few.
There’s been plenty of articles over the years in the national papers spruiking the best areas to buy into for rental returns. Mining towns are good, especially when they’re in the boom part of their cycle and housing is getting squeezed.
A lot of rental demand in those kinds of regional areas comes from people with a 2 to 5 year plan who don’t want to buy to live “forever” in a social backwater. So a lot of investment property owners can then ride through the “bust” part of the cycle on the backs of those people.
