Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Daniel's landlord had CCTV cameras installed in his house. A legal grey area allowed it
Nabila Clarke SBS (No paywall)When Nathan Thomas and Daniel Delaney moved into a Brisbane share house in 2022, they never expected that their every move could be watched. Along with six other housemates, they each rented rooms in the house. "We were there for six months and then they sent us an email mentioning that the kitchen was going to be renovated," Nathan told Insight. The property manager notified all eight tenants that an electrician would be coming by as part of the renovations. But when the roommates returned home that day, eight CCTV cameras had been installed around the common areas. Two outside, and six inside.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/daniels-landlord-had…
# Must read Australia, Rent, Security and safety.Housing in Australia is a bin fire – and desperate people will buy anything
Peter Lewis The Guardian (No paywall)Housing in Australia is a bin fire stoked by shysters pumping up their assets for short-term advantage to the detriment of those they claim to serve. And that’s just the policy auction. Political shiny suits carry on like BMW-driving real estate agents who know it’s a seller’s market, pumping up expectations on all sides in pursuit of the sale. Liberal braggarts nudge us to dig into our retirement savings to make deposit; Greens roll out shiny new display units and implore us to buy off the plan; while Labor tries to convince us the structure is fundamentally sound and just needs a fresh lick of paint.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2024/ap…
# Hot topic Australia, .Sydney landlord’s greedy move to raise rent by $280 a week
Sarah Sharples news.com.au (No paywall)The cold, template letter from our property managers declaring that the rent was rising by $250 a week made me burst into tears. My husband had picked up the innocent looking envelope from our mailbox on a Saturday morning but little did we know the horror it contained. In the middle of a rental crisis, we were going to have to either move from our Sydney apartment we had lived in for two years or cough up more than $1000 a month to stay. A place we had made our home and where we had always paid our rent on time, kept the place in excellent condition and rarely raised issues – but none of that mattered. The previous year we had agreed to a $20 a week increase, which we thought was fair.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/sydney-landl…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent.Sydney’s dire rental crisis uncovered
7 News (No paywall)VIDEO: New figures have highlighted our state's dire rental crisis. Almost half a million families have now been forced onto rental assistance, with those in Sydney's southwest suffering the most.
# TUNSW in the media, Research alert NSW, .Bondi listing: $1,250 a week for flat with construction noise and works spilling into living area
Tamsin Rose The Guardian (No paywall)Renters are being asked to shell out $1,250 a week to live in a three-bedroom Bondi apartment where scaffolding and boards block almost every window – and there’s construction noise from 7am weekdays and 8am Saturdays. When Oliver came across the Bondi listing at the weekend – six months into his “gutting” search for a rental for his young family – he was shocked. “Initially, when you see a property come up, you’re excited,” he said. “There’s actually a property that’s a bit above our budget and maybe, just maybe, there’s an opportunity there but then … it’s a construction site.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/03/bondi-lis…
# Hot topic, TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Starting a tenancy.‘No family, no friends, no backups’: is moving to regional Australia really a fix for the housing crisis?
Eliza Spencer The Guardian (No paywall)Record low vacancy rates, soaring rents and interest rates that outpace wage growth have pushed about one in five Australians to consider moving out of the city. But with a rapid rise in regional house prices, rental shortages and pressure on essential services, some who have made the big move are now counting the cost. Beck Carter and her family left Bligh Park, near Windsor in Sydney’s west, in 2022. The family-of-three moved to Canowindra, about 60km from the regional city of Orange, for her husband’s work.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/06/australia…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent.‘So you’re calling me a liar?’: Real estate agent had relationship with owner prior to fire, court docs reveal
Sarah Keoghan news.com.au (No paywall)A real estate agent who accidentally burned a multimillion-dollar home to the ground in one of Sydney’s most prestigious suburbs had previously been in a relationship with the owner, court documents have revealed. Sydney realtor Julie Bundock was preparing for an open house of a four-bed home on the northern beaches when she noticed the current renters of the house had left some bedding on the deck to dry. According to documents tendered to the NSW Supreme Court as part of a civil lawsuit brought by the owner and four tenants against her employer, Ms Bundock removed the sheets and threw them in a downstairs room onto a shelf below a light, which she then switched on.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/selling/so-youre-cal…
# Hot topic NSW, .How the rental crisis ate its way into the middle class
Max Maddison and Nigel Gladstone The Sydney Morning Herald (Soft Paywall)“We might eventually see caps on rents introduced by Labor in NSW — the sky hasn’t fallen in in places like the ACT where they’ve been around for a while,” a NSW government backbencher muses. The Minns government’s embarking on the most comprehensive reforms of the state’s planning laws in a generation prompts the question: in the midst of a worsening housing crisis, will they be enough? Sydney’s longstanding affordability problem has mutated since the pandemic. Supply shortages, successive interest rate hikes and migration-fuelled demand have caused rents to soar over the past two years, exacerbating housing stress and carving into usually comfortable middle-class households.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/how-the-rental-crisis-ate-it…
# Hot topic, Research alert NSW, .