The Food Chain

A short guide to renting in Sydney.

Photo by Veronika Dee on Unsplash

Recently a friend regaled us with the deeply depressing stories of trying to find a new rental property in Sydney’s inner west.

She adopted a dog (well within her legal rights), dutifully informed the owner. The owner was concerned that their children (who may or may not choose to live there one day) have allergies.

A week after her request to home the canine, she was told the owner intended to move back in immediately, and would have to vacate.

Absolute rubbish.

Finding a new rental in Sydney is an exercise in discovering how many people can take a piece of you before you get a key.

You start with the listing. The photos were taken by someone who shoots real estate the way dating profiles shoot people: from above, in good light, with the mess cropped out. The "sun-drenched living area" is a window. The "generous proportions" means you can fit a couch if you don’t also want a dining table. "Charming" means old. "Full of character" means broken in a way that’s been there long enough to be considered a feature.

You apply. You and forty-seven other people, all of whom have been asked to provide payslips, rental history, references, a cover letter (a cover letter, for a unit), and a personal statement explaining why you deserve to live there. You are auditioning for the right to pay someone else’s mortgage. The agent will not respond, but your personal details will definitely be sold-off to a thousand scammer databases

You inspect. Saturday, 15-minute window. You take your shoes off and shuffle through someone else’s home alongside a dozen strangers, all pretending not to size each other up. The carpet is sticky. The bathroom has mould that’s been painted over so many times it has texture. The oven doesn’t work but the listing said "gas cooking" and technically the burners still light if you use a match.

The rent is over $1,000 a week. For this.

The landlord hasn’t visited the property since 2019 but has opinions about whether you can hang a picture. The property manager works for the landlord, is paid by the landlord, and will treat every maintenance request like you’re asking for a personal favour. The shower will leak for six weeks before someone comes to look at it. They will look at it, agree that it leaks, and leave.

You’ll get the bond back minus a cleaning fee for a place that wasn’t clean when you moved in.

And you’ll do it again in twelve months when the rent goes up by a number that has absolutely zero relationship to anything that happened to the property, because nothing happened to the property. Nothing ever happens to the property. It just costs more now.

That’s the deal. You navigate a chain of bottom feeders, each skimming something off the top, and at the end of it you get a small place to call your own that isn’t yours, was never going to be yours, and will be taken from you the moment someone decides they can get more from the next person in line.

The only alternative? Be born in the right family so mum and dad can guarantee a loan with more digits than you thought your banking app could display

Sydney doesn’t have a ‘rental market’. It has a queue of people hoping to find one shred of decency in a system that sold it off years ago.

Good luck out there.