Rent report highlights price crunch

SURF Coast and Bellarine rental properties have become “severely unaffordable” and verage income household could also soon struggle to afford Geelong’s cheapest suburbs, according to latest metrics.

The 2022 Rental Affordability Index (RAI) found that the greater Geelong-Surf Coast region has been among the worst affected across Australia in a rent squeeze since the start of COVID-19.

The report is a combined publication from SGS Economics and Planning, National Shelter, Beyond Bank and Brotherhood of St Laurence investigating rental affordability at a regional level across Australia.

The RAI measures the proportion of income households are spending on housing to measure its affordability.

A lower score indicates a greater degree of income stress.

It uses a benchmark figure of 100 as the threshold where housing is considered unaffordable – costing more than 30 per cent of total income.

Latest results released at the end of November, which covers data to the middle of this year, found that Torquay’s score had dipped below 80, with Ocean Grove also approaching that mark for the first time since the dataset began in 2011.

“The Surf Coast and Geelong regions experienced some of the largest decreases in affordability between 2020 and 2021, with Ocean Grove and Torquay considered severely unaffordable to the average regional Victorian rental household,” the report stated.

“This trend has continued in 2022.”

Torquay, Ocean Grove-Barwon Heads and Anglesea have all ranked severely unaffordable in the latest report, with around 40 per cent of an average household income required to secure a property at the median rent price.

Even the region’s typically affordable suburbs have drifted below the affordability threshold.

Lara, North Geelong and Belmont-Grovedale all scored below 100 in the latest report, while areas such as Newcomb-Whittington and Corio-Norlane dropped from Affordable to Moderately Unaffordable, with more than 25 per cent of income now going toward rent.

No region on the Surf Coast or Bellarine scored above 100, with all ranking between Unaffordable and Severely Unaffordable.

The report found that affordability trends were replicated across regional Victoria is at a “historic low” with conditions deteriorating across the board since the start of the pandemic.

“The trend of declining affordability is consistent across all parts of regional Victoria, albeit at different scales.”