Cheapest Capital City Suburbs To Rent Today

It costs a median $616 per week to rent a property across Australia’s combined capital cities, with rents rising 10% over the past 12 months alone, according to new CoreLogic data. The cost is lower across the combined regions a median of $507 per week, up 4.1% over the past year.

Rents across Australia have risen by 30% over 38 consecutive months, adding $137 per week to the median cost of renting. The number of properties being advertised for rent fell to its lowest level in more than 10 years during the September quarter. A rental vacancy rate of 3% is considered a balanced market but rates are now at record lows of 1% in the capitals and 1.2% in the regions.

CoreLogic Economist Kaytlin Ezzy said record high net overseas migration and an estimated shortfall of 47,500 rental homes were pushing rental values higher. However, she noted that the pace of rental growth is starting to slow, with national rents rising 1.6% in the September quarter compared to 2.2% in the June quarter, as renters hit an affordability ceiling.

Ms Ezzy said more renters were banding together to form larger households to share the burdensome cost – a trend that is creating stronger demand for rental houses, in particular. “There is already some evidence that a structural change in household formation, coupled with worsening affordability in the unit sector, has shifted some rental demand back in favour of the low-density sector,” Ms Ezzy said. “National house rents are now rising faster than unit rents … reversing the trend seen through much of 2022 and the first half of 2023.”

CoreLogic has published a report revealing the cheapest suburbs to rent in within a 20km radius of capital city CBDs. The list below shows the current median weekly rent in each suburb.

Cheapest rents within 20km of CBDs

Sydney houses

Auburn $648 pw

South Granville $657 pw

Granville $673 pw

Regents Park $675 pw

Sefton $676 pw

Sydney apartments

Berala $486 pw

Wiley Park $491 pw

Punchbowl $498 pw

Lakemba $501 pw

Regents Park $509 pw

Melbourne houses

Albanvale $441 pw

Laverton $441 pw

Broadmeadows $441 pw

Kings Park $442 pw

Ardeer $443 pw

Melbourne apartments

Albion $366 pw

St Albans $398 pw

Deer Park $406 pw

Kingsville $411 pw

Thomastown $420 pw

Brisbane houses

Woodridge $501 pw

Inala $503 pw

Ellen Grove $523 pw

Darra $526 pw

Rocklea $544 pw

Brisbane apartments

Woodridge $352 pw

Rochedale South $436 pw

Strathpine $446 pw

Brendale $459 pw

Alexandra Hills $468 pw

Adelaide houses

Salisbury $473 pw

Braham Lodge $475 pw

Salisbury Downs $478 pw

Paralowie $498 pw

Taperoo $502 pw

Adelaide apartments

Salisbury East $361 pw

Salisbury $378 pw

Kilburn $397 pw

Klemzig $402 pw

St Marys $403 pw

Perth houses

Girrawheen $491 pw

Gosnells $501 pw

Midland $503 pw

Middle Swan $518 pw

Koondoola $519 pw

Perth apartments

Midland $433 pw

Gosnells $441 pw

Noranda $445 pw

Hamilton Hill $457 pw

Coolbellup $462 pw

Hobart houses

Bridgewater $485 pw

Midway Point $501 pw

Chigwell $501 pw

Claremont $509 pw

Berridale $516 pw

Hobart apartments

Claremont $411 pw

West Moonah $422 pw

Glenorchy $431 pw

Lindisfarne $456 pw

New Town $463 pw

Canberra houses

Higgins $597 pw

Scullin $598 pw

Page $599 pw

Charnwood $599 pw

Holt $599 pw

Canberra apartments

Lyons $468 pw

Chifley $494 pw

Hawker $501 pw

Mawson $528 pw

Gungahlin $529 pw

Darwin houses

Moulden $539 pw

Gray $549 pw

Driver $564 pw

Woodroffe $587 pw

Bakewell $591 pw

Darwin apartments

Bakewell $457 pw

Leanyer $468 pw

Coconut Grove $475 pw

Millner $478 pw

Rapid Creek $494 pw

Drifts of ground cover plants and wildflowers along the steps of the Sydney Opera House, traffic obscured by meadow-like planting and kangaroos pausing on city streets.

This is the way our cities could be, as imagined by landscape architect Jon Hazelwood, principal at multi-disciplinary architectural firm Hassell. He has been exploring the possibilities of rewilding urban spaces using AI for his Instagram account, Naturopolis_ai with visually arresting outcomes.

“It took me a few weeks to get interesting results,” he said. “I really like the ephemeral nature of the images — you will never see it again and none of those plants are real.

“The AI engine makes an approximation of a grevillea.”

Hazelwood chose some of the most iconic locations in Australia, including the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, as well as international cities such as Paris and London, to demonstrate the impact of untamed green spaces on streetscapes, plazas and public space.

He said he hopes to provoke a conversation about the artificial separation between our cities and the broader environment, exploring ways to break down the barriers and promote biodiversity.

“A lot of the planning (for public spaces) is very limited,” Hazelwood said. “There are 110,000 species of plants in Australia and we probably use about 12 in our (public) planting schemes.

“Often it’s for practical reasons because they’re tough and drought tolerant — but it’s not the whole story.”

Hazelwood pointed to the work of UK landscape architect Prof Nigel Dunnett, who has championed wild garden design in urban spaces. He has drawn interest in recent years for his work transforming the brutalist apartment block at the Barbican in London into a meadow-like environment with diverse plantings of grasses and perennials.

Hazelwood said it is this kind of ‘complex nature’ that is required for cities to thrive into the future, but it can be hard to convince planners and developers of the benefits.

“We have been doing a lot of work on how we get complex nature because complexity of species drives biodiversity,” he said.

“But when we try to propose the space the questions are: how are we going to maintain it? Where is the lawn?

“A lot of our work is demonstrating you can get those things and still provide a complex environment.”

At the moment, Hassell together with the University of Melbourne is trialling options at the Hills Showground Metro Station in Sydney, where the remaining ground level planting has been replaced with more than 100 different species of plants and flowers to encourage diversity without the need for regular maintenance. But more needs to be done, Hazelwood said.

“It needs bottom-up change,” he said. ““There is work being done at government level around nature positive cities, but equally there needs to be changes in the range of plants that nurseries grow, and in the way our city landscapes are maintained and managed.”

And there’s no AI option for that.