The rental crisis has actually been going on for years

The rental crisis is currently impacted thousands of hard working Aussies and there’s a sad and brutal truth behind it.

COMMENT

I’ve been renting in Sydney for almost a decade, and I’m here to report that the rental crisis has been going on for years.

The crisis has easily outlasted any female co-host’s reign on any Australian morning show.

The rentals have all begun to blur together, and none of them were ever good enough in the first place.

The diva deserves better. (I’m the diva).

I have been in crisis over renting since my university days when I didn’t even have my own Medicare card.

Forget luxe listings, my entire rental history can be summarised as a lacklustre listing.

If you’ve had the pleasure of renting in a major city in Australia when the average cost of a home is over $1 million, you’d know this isn’t a fresh problem.

We’ve all lived in a house with this exact kitchen. Source: Domain

Why is the oven always white?? Source: Domain

I know all the signs of a crappy rental in Australia.

There’s always a white oven, a popcorn ceiling, and a slightly too small window to provide any real natural light.

The walls will have been painted white, probably before you were born so they now will resemble a weird mix between beige and yellow.

The house will always smell slightly damp, and when your mum visits, she’ll freak out and insist on buying you a gadget that purifies the air because she’s genuinely worried about your lungs in these conditions.

The toilet bowl will never quite look clean and is always a firm and disgusting reminder that the tenants have definitely left their mark on the property before you.

If there is a garden, it is slightly overgrown and one of your housemates will get into smoking and become weirdly territorial over the outside area.

So, you won’t spend any time there anyway — at least not until your lease is up and you have to do an emergency garden to get your bond back.

The cherry on top? About 40 per cent of your wages will go to renting these palaces and sometimes more. Definitely not just 30 per cent.

The cost of rent is so high, you’ll absolutely always have housemates, and there’s a high chance you’ll become enemies within six months over something banal like who ate someone else’s cheese.

Living in tiny spaces with people will bring out the worst in everyone including yourself.

Sometimes you’ll bond with a housemate over your mutual hatred of your other housemate. Sometimes you’ll be the housemate so hated, your other housemates bond over it.

Welcome to the renting games, it’s like the hunger games, but there’s bond on the line and shared milk to be fought over.

What kind of wild flooring is this? Carpet, tiles, wood? Source: Domain

House-sharing is different for everyone but there’s some similar themes.

Your housemate will insist her boyfriend stays over seven days a week and not contribute a cent towards rent because he is such a joy to be around.

There’s a 50 per cent chance after three beers, the boyfriend will try and explain politics to your other housemate who is majoring in politics at university. Isn’t he cute?

You’ll retreat to your room to get some space but the walls are thin. So you have to put your headphones in otherwise you’ll have to listen to the couple having sex.

Renting in tiny places means that you will learn the sounds every housemate makes when they orgasm.

There will be a housemate that is so noise sensitive and complains about how you open or shut the front door.

The housemate group chat that was created to plan fun house dinners will eventually turn into a cesspit of passive aggressive messages.

Photos of dirty dishes in the sink accompanied by angry messages like, ‘Who did this?’ That will be a running theme.

But, don’t worry you’ll fall in love and move in with someone too quickly to get away from your crazy housemates.

At first you’ll feel smug and love the financial win of having a partner.

You’ll get a cute one bedroom place for $550 and be smug you’re only paying $275 each a week in rent.

However, soon you’ll realise you can hear your lover breathe in every room of the house and you’ll end up in a two bedroom place and be back to paying the same amount you paid in share houses.

I’ve moved into places and been greeted by everything from cockroach infestations to housemates that turn the kettle off at the power point every night.

I’ve experienced the creme de la creme of Sydney’s real estate.

There was the time I lived in a room in Waterloo and my room was divided by an illegal partition and still cost me over $200 a week.

On really windy nights I used to worry it would fall down and the rental crisis would actually kill me.

How is this bathroom so physically small? Source: Instagram

For $300 bucks a week this kitchen can be yours in Newtown. Source: Domain

There was my share house in Newtown that was right on the train line and became too expensive for my housemate and I to manage on our waitress wages, so our mutual mate moved into the living room, and it was still setting us back $200 a week.

Please, give a moment of silence for the time I rented a studio apartment in a terrace, and I had to go downstairs to take my bins out which involved going into my neighbour’s yard and unlocking three separate gates. And I was paying $385 a week for this pleasure.

When I moved out of the place, I argued with the real estate because they wanted me to pull out the oven and clean behind it physically. Pull out a whole oven from the wall, somehow get in behind it, and clean it. What?

There was also the new build. I moved into a Botany because I was fed up with going for problematic charming properties.

It wasn’t bad, but for some wild reason, the lift always broke when it was raining, so I spent half my life trying not to get locked in the fire escape.

The woman that lived above us had two kids and had to navigate the constantly broken-down lift with a pram and toddlers. I got to pay over $300 for that privilege.

I have been renting in Sydney so long, I think I may have seen it all. The only thing I haven’t seen is an affordable and perfect rental.

So, if you are just hearing about the rental crisis — welcome it is horrible and expensive here.