Family feeling rental pain

VERY desperate – these two words sum up the rental home search for Pradeepika Ranaweera and her family.

After moving to Hobart from Melbourne, the family has struck out over and over again trying to secure an affordable home to rent.

To date, they have looked at 30 properties and counting. And they feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

“We feel very desperate,”

Mrs Ranaweera said. “We have got good references, but finding a new rental that we can afford seems impossible.

“If we cannot find somewhere soon, we may have to move back to Melbourne.”

Mrs Ranaweera inspected a modest two-bedroom unit in Glenorchy yesterday but was just one among 42 groups of prospective tenants for the unit.

PRD-nationwide property portfolio manager Maddy Bourke said this was a standard number of people seen at rental inspections of late in the more affordable end of the market.

Recently she had held inspections where 20, 40 and even 120 groups had turned out to look at a property.

“One of the hardest things is the reality that only one group can move in and the rest will still be searching for somewhere to live,” she said.

Real Estate Institute of Tasmania president Mandy Welling said extremely busy rental inspections such as this one had become common in Hobart.

“I am still hearing plenty of troubling stories like this,” she said.

“With such a strong economy in Tasmania, we have become victims of our own success.”

Chief economist at realestate.com.au Nerida Conisbee said from an investor point of view Hobart’s rental market would be seen as “red hot”.

“Hobart rental growth remains red hot, it is up 9 per cent over the past 12 months,” she said.

In October, Hobart’s vacancy rate was 0.7 per cent, according to SQM Research.