‘There’s no way I could rent alone’: Growing number of Sydneysiders turn to sharehouses

When Jackson Rainbird, 20, moved to Sydney three months ago he started looking for a studio or one-bedroom apartment to rent.

Previously living in Wagga Wagga for work with an airline, he had been living alone comfortably in a one-bedroom apartment for $275 a week.

But when he looked for something similar in Sydney he found it impossible and was forced to drastically adjust his expectations. In Paddington, where he was initially looking, very basic studios start at $340 a week – but can cost twice as much.

When Jackson Rainbird moved from regional NSW to Sydney, he could no longer afford to live by himself. Photo: Ben Rushton.

“There’s no way I could afford to rent alone,” Mr Rainbird said.

He widened his search and asked his friends, who mostly lived in the inner west.

There has been such an influx of students … I can’t remember the last time I rented a house to a family in Burwood, Ashfield or Croydon Park.Deeb Faljoun, Ray White Burwood

Now, he lives in a sharehouse in Newtown with two housemates, paying $250 a week each for the 120-square terrace. 

Jackson Rainbird pays $250 a week to live in a Newtown terrace he shares with two housemates. Photo: Ben Rushton.

And rent is on the rise. In the inner west, the median weekly advertised rent for a house jumped from $750 to $780 in the past 12 months, Domain Group data shows. Five years ago, rents were $650 a week.

Related: Sydney’s apartment rents squeezing singles into sharehouses

Related: Sharehouse living in your 30s vs 20s

Sydney’s real estate is increasingly home to sharehouses, as renters opt for housemates to keep costs down. Photo: Rob Homer

Related: Why seniors are choosing to live in sharehouses

It seems many have felt the squeeze on the hip pocket and are pouring into the sharehouse market.

One in nearly six households in Newtown are now made up of housemates.

In Ultimo, favoured by students for the ease of access to the University of Sydney, UTS and TAFE, 28.2 per cent of homes are sharehouses. Photo: Google Streetview

In the five years to 2016, an additional 11,000 sharehouses appeared in Greater Sydney – pushing this small segment of the market from 4.3 per cent to 4.7 per cent of all homes.

Proportionally, this was the biggest increase of all household types – lone households declined over the same timeframe. It also surpassed official ABS projections.

UNSW City Futures Research associate director Hal Pawson believes it’s a shift driven by an increase in international students and declining housing affordability. 

“These are all areas very well located for commuting to universities,” he said. “They have pretty big international student populations.”

He added that with an increasing number of young people locked out of the property market, the rising number of longer-term renters was another factor.

In Ultimo, favoured by students for the ease of access to the University of Sydney, UTS and TAFE, 28.2 per cent of homes are sharehouses. This is up from 17 per cent in 2011 and 12.6 per cent in 2006.

Sharehouses in neighbouring Chippendale have also doubled in the past 10 years.

But the wider City of Sydney area falls behind Burwood, Randwick, Waverley, the Inner West and Strathfield council areas when it comes to the biggest increases in the proportion of sharehouses. 

In the suburb of Burwood, one in six homes is now a group household – and for rental homes this figure could be much higher.

Demographer Glenn Capuano, from population consultancy .id, said this could be due to the growing migrant population in the area.

But the escalating housing affordability crisis in Sydney’s inner west was also prompting more people to turn to sharehouses.

“Fewer people are living alone,” Mr Capuano said. “They can’t make ends meet, that way.”

Ray White Burwood principal Deeb Faljoun said there was often more money to be made from renting room by room or to group households which made it an attractive option to local landlords, facing low rental yields of 2.5 per cent.

“There has been such an influx of students … I can’t remember the last time I rented a house to a family in Burwood, Ashfield or Croydon Park,” he said.

With families and group households competing for larger homes, the problem now is that very few of these types of properties are being built, Grattan Institute fellow Brendan Coates said.

“We’re building a lot of one and two-bedroom apartments close to the city, we need more housing suitable for families, which could also work for sharehouses.”

Further out from the CBD there was little sign of a rise in sharehouses.

About a third of all local government areas recorded modest declines from 2011 to 2016 in group households – most notably suburban councils, including the Hills District, Hawkesbury and Sutherland.

But the appetite for renting in groups across all of Greater Sydney could be much higher than what the statistics show, Don’t Rent Me tenants advocate Antony Ziebell said.

“Sharehousing, or sub-letting, is restricted under most leases … so it’s not that surprising if the numbers haven’t grown astronomically,” Mr Ziebell said.

“Instead, we can see that in NSW it is very common for people up to 24 [years old] to simply stay at home.”