Arabic version: تكاليف الرهن العقاري تقل عن الإيجارات في بعض الضواحي الأسترالية

According to The Guardian, rising rents and falling property values have narrowed the difference between renting and buying in parts of Australia, with mortgage repayments now cheaper than rent in dozens of suburbs. Guardian Australia’s analysis of Cotality data found that median rents in inner-city Melbourne, suburban Canberra and Darwin were nearing weekly home-loan repayments.

Australia’s median rent rose 5.5% in the year to September, reaching $713 a week, while the median price across houses and units was flat over the same period after six months of steady declines. In one in 10 suburbs and towns, repayments for a typical property were less than $200 a week above rent, while some locations had lower repayments than rents.

The comparison assumes a new 30-year loan worth 95% of a property’s value at a 6.2% interest rate, without additional costs. In Melbourne, the typical apartment rent was $628 a week after a 4.8% annual increase. Typical repayments were $839 a week, or $211 more, based on a September median apartment value of $624,740, nearly $25,000 lower than a year earlier. Repayments were cheaper than rent for typical properties in Carlton, Melbourne CBD, Notting Hill, Travancore and Southbank.

In Sydney, repayments were only $100 a week above rents in Ultimo, Warwick Farm, Rosehill, Liverpool and Granville. In Canberra, Belconnen and Phillip had repayment gaps of less than $75 a week; apartment-only comparisons also included Braddon, Lyons, Gungahlin and Harrison. Cotality researcher Gerard Burg said substantial apartment construction could reduce purchase prices while tight rental availability lifted rents, though he described such areas as anomalies and said houses generally remained more expensive to buy than rent.

Darwin had buying costs below rents in a quarter of suburbs, after rents climbed 11.6% over the year. Burg said many of those locations were mining or resource-project areas where fly-in fly-out workers rent temporarily. He said the gap could narrow further if the Reserve Bank held rates steady, property values continued to fall and rents kept rising or remained unchanged.