Rental market of International students in Sydney

Considering the trend that a great number of overseas students constantly flow into Sydney for higher and better environment of education, accommodation has become an inevitable issue for the group of people. According to the Hare, in the around first half 2017, the number of overseas students was up to 685000. This figure is quite astounding, which means a large amount of accommodation was needed accordingly. However, in Australia, living in the campus is not a prevailed choice for both international students and local students in that renting the dormitory provided by universities would be at a relatively high cost. Hence, local students prefer to live at their home while international students tend to look for accommodation out of campus.

Market situation between 2017 and 2018

Currently, houses price has increased in Sydney, compared to the previous years. In contrast, the rents in Sydney tends to decrease recently in many areas such as the city centre while rents of houses in several regions remain steady. However, the information is still not bringing more surprise for the international students, as the slight change on the amount of rents do not reduce enough financial burden for them to rent accommodation in the biggest city of Australia. Market Insight states that the median rent of all types of accommodation is $583. That might be exorbitant for overseas students which mainly consists of Chinese and Indian students, which have not attended workplace and do not have reliable income. This is because the average price for renting houses in the two countries are $713.76 and $234.58 per month separately (locate in city centre), which are much cheaper than that of Sydney. The most expensive area in Australia is Sydney where students’ expenditure on renting accommodation is over 6% above the Australian average level.

Type of accommodation

The most classifications are retrieved from the Studyinternational and Internationalstudent website. There are many types of accommodation for overseas student to live in. Also, there are different ways for students to apply for them. For example, they can apply through landlords’ personal contacts, agents, official websites of dormitories and homestay.

First, on-campus housing is one of the most popular types of dwellings (Studies in Australia). The rents of on-campus housing would vary in terms of various sizes. Generally, it is a single room with a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and a chair. Sometimes it would also provide the independent bathroom, otherwise the tenants will need to share the public bathrooms. In addition, this kind of housing would provide a public kitchen, and offer the laundry machine and laundry dryer which are usually chargeable. Although this type of accommodation is popular, students are supposed to apply for it in advance due to that the amount of on-campus housing is very limited (Kendal, 2018). This can also be considered as another reason that students are not able to live in it. The accommodation could be applied via its official websites. Sometimes, many institutions also offer apartments for rent either close to or out of the range of universities. This provides students with the security of institution-approved accommodation, but with the increased freedom of fully self-catered living. Single and shared apartments are usually available.

Second, with respect to the accommodation out of campus, private rental or rental property is one of the students' preference. The type of accommodation provides an ideal opportunity for those students who intent to live together with their close friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, with jointly applying for it and sharing the rents. Also, students could move home into an existing household, and live with some flatmates they might not even know. Sometimes the students need to prepare basic furniture by themselves because the properties are less likely to be furnished. Before moving in, tenants are usually required to pay the bond and the holding deposit. Bond are equal to four-weeks rents, and the holding deposit are equal to one to two-weeks rents. Bond would be returned to tenants after they fulfilled the lease and checked out. The types of accommodation include apartment, unit, house and townhouse. Apartments would be cleaner and tidy, as most of them are recently-established. Resultantly, they would be more expensive in comparison to other types of properties within the same area. Usually, apartments buildings are installed with elevators.

Compared to apartments, units’ decoration to some degree are older as they were built a few years ago. Moreover, units are shorter than apartments, and are 3-5 storied buildings. Therefore, they do not contain elevators.

Apart from the dormitories and rental properties, Homestay is another option for students. It refers to the program that international students live with Australia family. Meals are usually covered in the rents. this could be a great opportunity for overseas students to integrate into the local society, with communicating with local people and learning Australian culture from them.

Common issues & solutions

There are several problems existing in the rental market of international students in Sydney. One of them is that a few landlords would still keep the bond when or after students check out.If the landlords refuse to return the bond without any proper ground when you check out, you could ask for help for Fair Trading. Moreover, one of the other issues is that, a few tenants would be reluctant to report the repairs promptly when they arise as they afraid that the rent will climb up due to the report. However, that might cause a bigger problem.  In fact, the property should be remained well-maintained, and the rents would not randomly rise without considering the market situation. There is another core problem existing in the rental market in Sydney. Tenants would be likely to face the "no grounds eviction" which is also called "no-cause eviction". In most states of Australia, except Tasmania, landlords are entitled to terminate the tenancy and rental agreement by adopting the "no ground/ no-cause eviction" without providing any reason. This kind of eviction could be a retaliatory eviction, and it is detrimental to relevant rights of tenants. On September, up to 45 experts and researchers united together by signed an open letter, advocating that the "no grounds/ no-cause eviction" is supposed to be abolished to protect tenants. Australian government could refer to some measures implemented by other countries. For instance, after renting for over half year in a tenancy, the tenants are allowed to keep renting for further five and half years, which prevents the landlords from randomly ending the tenancy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, renting accommodation in Sydney is still a big challenge for international students, given that they lack of adequate legal knowledge and awareness rental and they usually are not able to gain enough details and other specific information about the accommodations where they plan to move in. Meantime, the high rents is also a prominent problem for the international students in Sydney.

Reference

This article "Rental market of International students in Sydney" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Rental market of International students in Sydney. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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