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
Rental prices in NSW are at an all-time high. So, when will we see relief?
Rhiannon Lewin 7 News (No paywall)A grim outlook for NSW renters has been revealed by experts, who have said the current competitive and record-breaking rental market may not ease for at least another year. Paul Ryan from PropTrack said while demand for housing in NSW has always been very strong, it has skyrocketed in the past years since the COVID pandemic. “At the moment, NSW remains the least affordable state to rent in across the country,” he told 7NEWS.com.au.
https://7news.com.au/news/rental-prices-in-nsw-are-at-an-all-tim…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent.How much your rent will rise this year: every NSW suburb revealed
Aidan Devine & Taylor Troeth Daily Telegraph (Paywall)Sydney tenants could be stung with rent rises of up to $400 a week this year – even for units well outside the inner city – as declining rental supply and surging demand heat the market to a boiling point.
One of the growing issues for tenants is that cash strapped landlords are selling their properties to combat interest rate hikes, with distressed sales surging over the past year. This has been accelerating the decline in rental supply. Projections from research group Suburbtrends revealed house rents across the average Australian suburb would rise 11 per cent for the year, while unit rents would leap up an average 27 per cent. More extreme rental increases were expected in Sydney’s southwest, Parramatta region and southern suburbs, the modelling showed.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/property/how-much-your-rent-wi…
# Hot topic NSW, .Love it or hate it, Sirius lives to tell a new chapter in Sydney’s history
Julie Power The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The controversial conversion of the former public housing block Sirius into luxury housing was never going to slip under the radar, with its new copper living pods visible to anyone heading south on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. To be completed in June at a cost of about $150 million, the conversion of the 79 public housing flats into 75 high-end apartments – topped by a penthouse now selling for $50 million – was the most complex project undertaken by its builders, architects and developer.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/love-it-or-hate-it-sirius-li…
# Hot topic NSW, Public and community housing.Jordan van den Berg: The 'Robin Hood' TikToker taking on Australian landlords
Tiffanie Turnbull BBC (No paywall)Three years ago, lawyer Jordan van den Berg was an obscure TikTok creator who made videos that mocked real estate agents. But today the 28-year-old is one of the most high-profile activists in Australia. Posting under the moniker Purple Pingers, Mr van den Berg has been taking on the nation's housing crisis by highlighting shocking renting conditions, poor behaviour from landlords, and what he calls government failures. It is his vigilante-style approach - which includes helping people find vacant homes to squat in, and exposing bad rentals in a public database - that has won over a legion of fans. Some have dubbed him the Robin Hood of renters.
# Must read, Hot topic Australia, Rent.Is squatting a legitimate response to the housing crisis?
ABC RN ABC (No paywall)Rental vacancies are at record lows, and rents are increasing, on average, far faster than our incomes, particularly in our biggest cities. That's leading to financial stress for many Australians and increasing the likelihood of housing insecurity. One temporary solution that's been proposed is for people without secure housing to move into properties that have been sitting unused for more than 2 years, what is commonly referred to as squatting. But is it legal to enter another person's house? What rights do property owners have? And why are some houses being left empty for years?
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/lifematters/squatting-in-…
# Hot topic, Audio Australia, Rent.‘My landlord is selling my place. Should he reduce my rent?’
Alison Barrett and Jillian Barrett news.com.au (No paywall)QUESTION: I’ve lived in my apartment for six years and love it but my landlord recently put it up for sale. I’d love to buy it but there’s no chance I’ll be able to afford it. There are heaps of viewings happening at the moment, which is quite inconvenient for me and I feel like my space is being invaded. My landlord also keeps hassling me to tidy up, which I don’t think is any of his business. How much notice should I get for these viewings? Also, when they sell the apartment how much notice will I get to leave? Everything feels very up in the air at the moment and I don’t feel as though my landlord is being supportive through the process. – Claire, NSW ANSWER: This sounds quite unsettling and frustrating Claire. As a general rule, tenants have the right to privacy when renting.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/my-landlord-is-selling-my-…
# Must read Australia, Rent.Indigenous public housing tenants fight to end no-grounds eviction in WA
Aaron Bunch National Indigenous Times (No paywall)Two Supreme Court legal challenges in Western Australia could end no-grounds evictions for public housing tenants. Lawyers for two Indigenous public housing tenants will argue the Department of Communities' use of no-grounds evictions and fixed-term public housing tenancies denies procedural fairness and is legally unreasonable. The outcome could have ramifications for more than 1000 public housing tenants on fixed-term tenancies, all of whom could be evicted from their home with no-grounds evictions. Lawyer Kate Davis says WA is the only Australian jurisdiction still using no-grounds evictions against public housing tenants. "We've got a real problem in this state of evictions of families from public housing and the consequences are devastating," she told reporters on Friday. Ms Davis said more than half of the public housing tenants on fixed-term tenancies evicted without grounds were Indigenous.
https://nit.com.au/20-04-2024/10940/indigenous-public-housing-te…
# Must read Australia, Aboriginal renters, Eviction, Rent.‘Property poetry’? Real estate ads and literature have more in common than you might think
Amelia Dale The Conversation (No paywall)A few years ago, I turned some real estate advertisements into poems by adding line breaks:
Fantastic views of the beach, ocean; headland and hinterland; you can see the Haven; you look straight up; the green grass of the Skillion. I was interested, among other things, in asking what happens when we compare the language of real estate copy with more obvious forms of poetry. If you read a real estate ad with the same attention you might bestow on a poem you can observe how it deploys metre, metaphor, and the tropes of landscape poetry. You can note how some advertisements directly reference the sublime or the picturesque, and how others open with a rhyming couplet.
https://theconversation.com/property-poetry-real-estate-ads-and-…
# Australia, Rent.