By Alesha Capone
Median weekly rents in Wyndham have dropped slightly across a 12-month period, according to property information and analytics provider CoreLogic.
Data from CoreLogic shows that in the year to June 30, median rents paid by residential tenants in Williams Landing and Wyndham Vale fell 0.4 per cent.
In Williams Landing, this equated to a median rent of $419 per week and in Wyndham Vale $372 per week.
In Tarneit, median rents dropped 0.3 per cent to $398.
The median weekly rent in Point Cook and Truganina decreased 0.2 per cent to $419 and $408 respectively.
The data revealed that median rents in Werribee remained steady at $361 per week.
Across Melbourne, the median weekly rent fell by 1.4 per cent to $444.
Everybody’s Home, a national housing and homelessness advocacy program supported by several not-for-profit organisations and service providers including the Salvation Army, Uniting, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the St Vincent de Paul Society, Tenants Victoria and Melbourne City Mission, is campaigning to increase social housing, raise rent assistance payments and end homelessness across Australia by 2030.
Everybody’s Home spokesperson said Kate Colvin said the main reason for rents staying “pretty much the same” in Wyndham is that fewer people have been looking for a rental property during the pandemic.
“Because of COVID, there is less population movement, so less pressure on rents in Wyndham,” she said.
“Some people who live in Wyndham may have moved to regional areas – all the way down the Surf Coast and regional Australia, rents have really increased.”
Ms Colvin said that for some people on low incomes, it is positive that Wyndham’s median rents have not become more expensive, as it means leasing a property remains affordable for them.
However, Ms Colvin said many community members still faced “a lack of affordability” when it came to finding rental housing in the west, after job losses and the decrease in JobSeeker support payments since March.
“There is a growing number of homeless people in Melbourne’s west, which has occurred across lockdowns,” she said.
“There is an increasing number of people accessing services.”
