Rental crisis: Man’s bizarre way of choosing housemate

A video shared to social media shows the extent of Sydney’s rental crisis, with a landlord going through a peculiar process to choose a housemate.

A post to social media shows the extent of Sydney’s rental crisis, with hundreds of people applying for a single room advertised on Facebook.

The video uploaded to TikTok features a man who received 133 messages of interest for a room he advertised that day, even claiming the property “isn’t ridiculously cheap”.

“It wasn’t until I posted this ad today for my housemate’s room that I realised how bad it is,” he is heard saying in the video.

“Look how many there are, just coming through today.

“How am I going to pick? I’m going to have to do some sort of Squid Game thing.”

In a peculiar selection method, the man then enters everyone’s name in the Marbles On Stream game to pick three people to interview.

“I’ve got 133 names in this document,” he says.

“We’re gonna play a bit of marbles.

“Is this happening everywhere? Because there’s like 120 people who need a house.”

A renter has exposed a crisis hitting Sydney

He places all the names in a simulator to choose who to interview. Picture: TikTok/@southeymusic

The marbles drop into the simulation and the names fight for a place as the man’s roommate.

“Why am I doing this?” the man asks.

“The race has started, look at all these people. These are all the people that have applied for the room.

“The top three I’ll give interviews on Wednesday.”

He watches the marbles race, encouraging them all along the way. Picture: TikTok/@southeymusic

He chooses the top three for housemate interviews. Picture: TikTok/@southeymusic

Commenters flocked to the post, saying it wasn’t just Sydney experiencing a lack of housing.

“Is this happening all over? Because this room isn’t ridiculously cheap or anything?” he asks his followers.

“Yup, literally the entire country,” one person commented.

“It’s happening in Perth, maybe not quite as bad, but I had 80 people wanting to rent my apartment offering like $250 over the asking price. It was stressful,” another shared.

“Please don’t scare me. I’m trying my darn hardest and I really don’t wanna be homeless,” said another.

“I’m currently trying to find a place, it’s stressing me out so much.”

“Yeah it’s like this on the Gold Coast too! So, so hard to find a place because there are so many people applying.”

The rental crisis across Australia is taking its toll as hundreds of applications for rental properties go unnoticed.

It comes in the wake of the fastest annual rises in rents on record, with rents for all categories of Sydney housing ballooning by close to a quarter over the last year – nearly four times the rate of inflation.