Where Sydney tenants are scoring free rent and utilities despite rental crisis

Sydney tenants have been escaping the rental crisis in city pockets where housing shortages have yet to hit, resulting in offers of rent discounts and free utilities for a year, exclusive data shows.

Sydney tenants can score up to two weeks free rent and free utilities for a year if they’re prepared to broaden their home search to outer suburbs.

Analysis of rental listings data has revealed multiple homes advertised with the first or second week’s rent covered by the landlord, despite the ongoing rental crisis and housing shortage.

It suggested tight rental conditions that drove Greater Sydney rents up by nearly 30 per cent over the past year did not spread everywhere.

The result was isolated pockets where tenants could get some reprieve with discounts or unusual incentives.

This included one deal where the landlord of a five-bedroom house in West Pymble was waiving the $1500 per week rent for the first week of tenancy.

Most of the other deals with free rent, utility bill discounts and other incentives aimed at luring tenants were in areas with a high supply of new houses or units.

Rental town homes in Box Hill are being offered with rental discounts.

This meant it was landlords who faced competition to attract tenants – not the other way around, as has been the case in most of Sydney over the past year.

Among the most tenant-friendly markets in Sydney was Box Hill, a suburb on the outer fringe of the Hills district.

Roughly 5 per cent of the rental properties in the suburb 42km northwest of the Sydney CBD were currently listed – about five times more than the city average, figures from SQM Research showed.

Landlords in the suburb were offering tenants some rare relief.

A four-bedroom townhouse on Hynds Rd in Box Hill and a neighbouring three-bedroom townhouse a few doors down are both being offered rent free for the first week. Rent is about $600 a week.

The larger townhouse even included an offer of free internet until 2026.

This Liverpool rental on Gillespie St includes a rent discount and rare utilities offer.

A screenshot of the Gillespie St rental in Liverpool.

The Liverpool CBD has also a proved a fertile hunting ground for rental discounts.

A brand new apartment on Gillespie St is being offered with the first two weeks rent free. The landlord is also offering free utilities, including internet and gas, for 12 months. The rent for the two-bedroom unit is $520 per week.

A three-bedroom unit listed with $650 per week rent in the same Liverpool building was on offer with a similar deal before it was snapped up earlier this week.

Further west, a three-bedroom duplex in Oakhurst in Western Sydney is being offered with two week’s free rent at a total value of $1000, with the listing specifying this would be offered at the end of the tenancy.

A West Pymble house on Kamilaroy Rd was offered with the first week occupancy rent free before being snapped up on Tuesday. The rent was listed at $1500 per week.

26 Kamilaroy Rd, West Pymble was offered with the first week's $1500 rent waived. The rental has since been snapped up.

Suburb Trends analyst Kent Lardner said some of the offers of rent free, in rare instances, were a hangover from the early Covid pandemic.

Back then it was a tenant’s market and landlords were desperate to attract renters, he said. “Property managers can fall into a habit of extending incentives they were offering before,” he said.

“It all comes back to supply,” Mr Lardner said. “If more housing is available it is going to be harder for landlords to attract tenants … the biggest rent increases we’ve seen recently were in areas where there is hardly any housing available, not just in that suburb, but in the surrounding suburbs too.”

He added that outer suburbs with a glut of newly built houses up for rent could, in time, ease pressure off of the rest of the rental market as more tenants moved there to capitalise on the more favourable conditions.

Suburbs where rental affordability has been the most stretched in NSW. Source: Suburb Trends.

Suburb Trends data showed major Sydney regions with the highest proportion of rental vacancies included the Wollondilly region in the outer southwest, Blacktown North and the region between Dural and Wisemans Ferry in the outer northwest.

Suburbs across NSW where rental affordability has been the most stretched included Eastlakes in Sydney’s southeast, North Wollongong, Port Kembla and Tweed Heads South.

SQM Research director Louis Christopher said February and March could be the most difficult time for tenants in “many years”.

One of the problems for the market is that many would-be first homebuyers are staying in the rental market for longer because of rising interest rates. Added to rising migration levels, this is putting pressure on the already constrained supply of housing, Mr Christopher said.