Qld rental crisis: Hunger games amid 800 rejections, inspection lockouts, full caravan parks
As Queensland’s rental market descends into a Hunger Games-style battle for homes, one mum has made a heartbreaking realisation about what might be stopping her from securing a home.
Lifestyle
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Queensland’s rental market has descended into a Hunger Games-style battle for homes, with tenants slugged an average of $56 more every week than when the state government held its flagship housing summit eight months ago.
And agents and industry experts have warned there is no end in sight to the state’s debilitating housing crisis, with vacancy rates plateauing near record lows and fears the continued tinkering of rental reforms has spooked investors.
A Courier-Mail investigation has uncovered distressing accounts from Queenslanders desperate to find a property, including real estate agents placing limits on property viewings, tenants submitting high-level resumes and offering cash in advance, caravan parks having zero vacancies, parents and children living in motels for months, and people being forced to find strangers online to live with in a bid to keep off the streets.
Since the government held a housing summit last October following sustained pressure to address the crisis, the average weekly rent in Brisbane has climbed 10 per cent from $560 to $616, or about $2900 a year – more than five times the rate of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s $550 cost-of-living relief payment.
In that time the rental vacancy rate has barely shifted – from 0.8 per cent to 1 per cent.
There are also concerns the full return of foreign students heading to Queensland post-Covid-19 is still to come, meaning supply of rental properties will likely be further affected.
Mother of three Jessica Tracy Taylor, 23, said she had been living in a caravan park since last September and distressingly applied for more than 800 properties – all which were rejected.
Despite the cramped conditions Ms Taylor, whose youngest child is just four weeks old, was still being slugged $480 a week, and said she felt “hopeless” about finding a home for her family.
“I just didn’t know what to do anymore,” she said.
“It’s a lot of worrisome nights, you spend most of your nights crying because you just don’t know where you’re going to be the next day.
“At the moment it’s struggling to find the money for the rent and be able to pay money for food.”
Ms Taylor, who also has a three-year-old son and a 13-month-old daughter, said before they found the caravan park the family had no choice but to live with her partner’s family, with 12 people crammed into one house.
“We are applying for town houses, condos, apartments, normal houses, duplexes, just anything,” she said.
“If we didn’t have my partner’s family we would have been living on the streets.
“We just couldn’t get approved for anything.
“It’s still been incredibly hard with prices of everything going up; rent is ridiculous.”
Multiple caravan parks across the state confirmed they were booked out and struggling to manage a wave of applications as the school holidays roll in.
Several parks said they were consistently operating at full capacity and receiving up to 70 phone calls a day for application requests.
Capalaba’s Greenacre caravan park manager Debbie Dawson said none of her long term rentals were leaving – because they had nowhere to go.
“I have nothing left to give,” she said.
Mother Taria Somers, 35, has spent two months desperately hunting for a rental, only to be knocked back from more than 50 rental properties.
“It’s deflating coming to inspections and some of them have 30 people there, so you know you’re fighting,” she said.
“I’ve got two small children, and I feel like that really impacts on our application compared with a couple with no kids.”
Ms Somers said she had been attending viewings almost every day.
“We need to be out of our place pretty soon – I don’t know what we’ll do,” she said.
Ms Somers said a third of her income was going towards rent at the moment, but now it was looking like it would be half or more when they found a new place to live.
David Waldron, the head of property management for Burlington Property Agents, said the market was the tightest it had been in a decade – and he did not see the crisis abating soon.
“We generally have run at a vacancy rate of 3.5-4 per cent … we are currently running at 1 per cent,” he said.
“The biggest demand is in the properties, houses three bedrooms, four bedrooms, under $500 a week.
“We are getting an increase in foreign students, (and) we aren’t seeing as many people vacating their properties.”
‘THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE’
A young couple have shared their concern on the short supply of properties in the months leading up to moving out.
Bethany Partridge, 29, and partner Eric Tessmann 30, from Bowen Hills are workers in Brisbane.
They have been looking for a rental property in Brisbane since May.
“Unfortunately, our current rental, the owner wants to sell and they want it to be vacant when they sell so we have to move out,” she said.
Ms Partridge said they had been looking for a new place since May.
“We’ve got a month until we have to be fully out.”
Ms Partridge said they had only looked at five places because there was nothing that fitted their criteria.
“There’s just nothing out there,” she said.
Mr Tessmann said there were no properties available within the budget they would have had a year ago.
“Prices are at a whole different level now,” he said.
The pair said just over a quarter of their income was going on rent.
Mr Tessmann added that the need to find somewhere was looming over them.
SINGLE MUM’S BATTLE
A young Brisbane woman has revealed her fears for the safety of her two daughters after she was forced to move into a motel.
Skye Baird, 33, said she had been staying in motels and couch surfing between her and her ex-partner’s parents homes for eight months until April.
“It was pretty rough on my daughter to be moving around schools all the time,” Ms Baird said.
“I tried to stay positive but there was times I couldn’t and had to face reality of knowing I didn’t have a house.”
She said her ordeal began when her lease ended and the owner of the place she was renting wanted to sell.
Skye said after she and her partner split, she turned to Micah Projects who placed her and her two daughters Shenayah, 2, and Sophia, 7, into a short-term motel at Hamilton for two months.
“Over that two months I applied for about six places and got rejected every time,” she said.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen and I felt like we would never get a place at one point.”
Skye said she was nervous for her daughter‘s safety at the motel and was relieved when Micah Projects helped them finally secure a home.
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