Where is the easiest place to find a home to rent in Melbourne?
Based on rental advertisements*, the easiest place to find a rental home in Melbourne is in the inner city or inner south-east.
Melbourne, St Kilda, South Yarra, Southbank and Docklands have each seen well over 1,000 units advertised for rent in the past year. The central suburb of Melbourne recorded just over 4,000.
The high prevalence of medium and high-rise units for rent in the inner city is a reflection of the role investors have played in supporting the growth of these markets.
It is quite remarkable to think that only twenty years ago the inner suburbs or Melbourne, Docklands and Southbank either did not exist or had very few houses for rent.
It is also interesting that in those suburbs the median advertised rent is well above the median for Melbourne which was $392 per week. In the suburb of Melbourne the median rent was $450 per week, in Southbank it was $530 and $540 in Docklands.
The suburb with the highest volume of houses advertised for rent was Frankston where the median advertised rent was $310 per week. This is well below the comparable number for the metropolitan area of $438.
Many other suburbs with high numbers of rental houses are also affordable, excluding Richmond which is ranked 4th by number of houses for rent but has a very high median advertised rent of $580 per week. This market will be driven by the demand for houses close to the CBD.
Top five suburbs ranked by number of houses advertised for rent
Top five suburbs ranked by number of units advertised for rent
* Rental observations are based on rental advertisements. These counts have been de-duplicated and rental advertisements are only counted when they can be physically matched to a property in our database.
Robert Larocca is Victorian housing market specialist for RP Data.