Rental markets and tenant vulnerability in Sydney

Rents have increased rapidly in Sydney since 2006 as home ownership gains have stalled, and housing production has slowed. Who is likely to have been most affected by these increases? This paper examines the spatial distribution of renters, investigating concentrations of households with specific demographic, social and economic characteristics (based on a cluster analysis of 2006 ABS data). Next, trends in rental rates are charted over the 2006-2011 period, to investigate which suburbs and which categories of renters have been most vulnerable to rent increases. The paper concludes with an analysis of the spatial concentration of disadvantage among private sector renters