Country Gal,

I'll clarify. Speculative 'investors' not building/housing developers or long term landlords. Speculative investors purchasing existing stock waiting for price increase and selling in short time frame to achieve a capital gain, secondary is negative gearing but rack up as much rent as fast as you can. Trading in existing housing stock as business - works while the bubble expands, works while there are supply constraints e.g., no large land releases, no significant changes to bid rent values, works when populations increases faster than new stock, works while major services and businesses don't relocate towards the fringe, works while transport doesn't allow easy mass transit, works while cost of private transport is high, works when cost of building is high.

40 kilometers from the same coastal resort a third of city folk flock to at Christmas .
A home that is valued at $200.000 no more, can be rented for $180 a week.
Top rent is $280 but those homes are no better all have tank water and septics.
You can pick from ,truly about 50, to 80 homes in 5 towns or villages but will work for far less if you do go bush.
20 years ago those homes rented for $30 and sold for $40.000.
One day a sea change will take place and Sydney prices may drop but truth is our city's are growing too fast too big and money rules this country.

Saint Fletcher,
The answer is in your own post. "We have tenants rights tribunals and regulations as to how far landlords can raise rents" " What ever happened to regulation... "
Obviously the more controls you have in the rental industry the less possibility there is to make a buck.
The problem is solved when more property developers get into the game. Supply and demand and all that.

Also: this concept of public housing is rather dumb. Poorer people are given two and sometimes three bedroom houses/flats in very often prime areas. Even though they pay about $100 p.w. whatever, the actual market price is probably two to three times that. Why not just give them $100 p.w. to help them find accomodation and then hire out their accomodation at the market price. The govt. would not lose out financially and as public housing tennants are generally not working anyway it wouldn't matter to them where they lived. Actually if all welfare/dole reciprients were given the same amount immaterial of where they lived then there would be the inducement to move out into the country where rents are cheaper, thus leading to the pressure being taken off city accomodation.

There is a reason why the most expensive area in Sydney also has some of the highest levels of people on disability support pensions. They have to live close to the major hospitals. The other hospitals simply don't have the recourses or the doctors to deal with complicated cases.

This is why they live in areas such as Wooloomolloo, Surry Hills and even Redfern. As such, they are also the most difficult housing stocks to find emergency cases to house the waiting list. Some waiting lists are up to 10 years long. We have patients with terminal illnesses living in hostels, and no where to plug in their oxygen apparatus. They often have uncontrolable bowels and vomiting, and can't climb steps.

You can't send them to the country, the hospitals there can't cope with them. Many are from the country. So there are poor people trapped in a wealthy area.

There are various rental subsidy schemes by the NSW Department of Housing but the "benchmarks", that is, the amount subsidised in relation to the total rent cannot keep up with the rent increase. Hospitals used to have patients, expecially old people, in hospital, to heal. Now they send them to emergency housing: Department of Housing.

Then there are the tenants from the Richmond Report, those that use to be in psych. hospitals are dumped into Department of Housing. They are neglected, cause trouble which is not their fault, they are insane officially and wards of the state. They also need specialist care, they have complicated issues.

So which ever way you look, the situation is going literally insane. I don't see market forces, I see people, and you can't just expect them to move. They live in the inner city for necessity, not because it's a nice post code.

Good point saintfletcher. That's where government needs to step in with a development proposal for a major regional centre. Develop a regional hospital with the required facilities - people dont have the same rental issues as they do in inner Sydney, and the development would do wonders for the economy of a regional centre. Win-win. Now, to find a government with the necessary foresight......

An Australian government with foresight - an oxymoron if I ever saw one!