Paul1405,
Thank you for confirming what I suspected all along, the greed factor is being played. Because the agent wants more money & the landlord wants more also he/she goes along with the agent.
The fact that many tenants don't earn enough to keep up is irrelevant for both agent & landlord !

Indy,

Not all landlords are greedy, and not all tenants are responsible. Some of the greedy are those who pissed it up against the wall, and then put their handout for an Aged Pension, thanks to the taxpayer.

Landlords like anyone else want a fair return on their investment. The government and the councils think that they are cash cows and tax them through stamp duty, rates and capital gains tax, all of which add to the rent the landlord has to take into account when charging rent.

Then of course there is rental property damage, maintenance, the risk of non-payment etc.

Rents could be a lot cheaper if everyone wasn't trying to clip the ticket along the way.

Rents could be a lot cheaper if everyone wasn't trying to clip the ticket along the way.
shadowminister,
That's about the gist of it ! Like a former work mate who complains
"I can't get the pension just because I have five (5) houses" !
Or, the bureaucrats who never actually contributed anything of substance to society racking in their Govt (taxpayer funded) Superannuation & own several rental properties !

Basically every person who voted for the Coalition at the previous election voted against sensible changes to negative gearing which has seen house prices and rents continue to spiral. You really don't get to whinge now about them.

Further this isn't a simple case of supply and demand. Around 10% of homes were unoccupied on Census night. There is plenty of housing around to provide homes for all. We have a class of people with dozens of rental properties who have outbid those looking to own their own home. We have often the same class of people who run multiple Air B&B properties as businesses renting to a monied class for sometimes thousands of dollars per night.

We have allowed government policy to commodify what should be one of the basic human rights, access to food, water and shelter.

We are about to give that particular class extensive tax cuts, money which could have made a real difference to social housing stocks across the country.

This really should be a case of you made your bed now lie in it, instead we have people trying to blame the victims, those forced into a lifetime of paying obscenely high rents to line the pockets of rampant profiteers.

SteeleRedux,
In our electorate rental went through the roof when the State Labor Govts over the past 25 years have sold off Govt housing & when they realised they actually needed it for their excess Public Servants they rented it all back without questioning the prices suddenly charged by the opportunist landlords. The landlords found it easy to exploit the situation with the co-operation of incompetent Labor supporting bureaudroids !
Anyhow, that's in our area, I don't have any info on the mad south !