Darwin is now the second most expensive place to rent a home in Australia, trailing only Sydney. The latest data from domain, shows a 7-percent increase in rental prices over a year. It's left lower income earners with nowhere to turn.
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00:00When Amanda and Mark moved to Darwin in December, they never imagined it would be so hard to
00:07find a place to call home.
00:09I probably applied for maybe 10 odd houses that I could afford, but everyone's trying
00:17to go for the cheap ones because no one can afford those expensive ones.
00:21It took them until February to land a rental in the rural suburb of Noonamah, unable to
00:26find anywhere affordable closer to town.
00:29I'd love to live closer to the city and be able to watch the beautiful sunsets, go to
00:32the Mindal markets every Thursday and Saturday.
00:35I'd love to get in and see those things in the city like I've been doing, but I can't
00:40because I can't really afford the petrol in because I'm having to pay what I'm paying
00:43in rent.
00:44Amanda works as a nurse and takes care of her husband, who's on a disability pension
00:49after surviving stage four brain cancer, but she's worried about what the future may hold.
00:55Like if this place goes up any higher in rent, then we will have to move on because we can't
00:58afford any more rent than $400 a week because we're not getting the income to be able to
01:03support that.
01:04Darwin is now tied second for the most expensive city to rent in, the average home costing
01:09$700 a week.
01:11Darwin also has one of the most competitive markets with a vacancy rate of 0.6%.
01:17There is a mismatch between demand and supply, which is why there is such a tight vacancy
01:23rate.
01:24When you have a vacancy rate below 2%, it shows that it is a landlord's market.
01:28Paired with the lack of social and affordable housing in Darwin, it's pushing more people
01:33into risk of homelessness.
01:35You look at the wait lists for public housing across the Northern Territory and they can
01:39be anywhere from about four to ten years, which is an incredibly long time for people
01:44to be waiting for housing and there's over 5,000 families or applicants on those wait
01:50lists at the moment.
01:51But there's a chance things could eventually turn.
01:54One of the positive aspects is we've started to see an increase of investment activity
01:58over the recent quarter and what that will eventually do is hopefully translate into
02:04higher levels of rental stock.
02:06Uncertainty in an unstable market.