Rental affordability in Western Australia has fallen to a record low with median advertised rents across Perth growing by almost 95 per cent since 2019, according to the latest research figures from the REA Group.
Realestate.com.au’s Rental Affordability Report shows Perth rents have nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic, increasing from $360 per week at the start of 2020 to $700 today.
The report said while all parts of the country have seen substantial increases in rents, growth has been particularly strong in Western Australia.
The increased median rents advertised from the March quarter of 2020 to the December quarter of 2025 show an increase of $340 per week in Perth and $300 per week in regional WA.
Regional Queensland recorded the third-highest increase nationally over the same period at $283, with Brisbane fourth at $270.
Report author and REA Group senior economist Angus Moore said the 94 per cent increase in advertised median rents sits far higher than the national average of 55 per cent.
“Perth and WA more broadly had quite a different trajectory from much of the rest of Australia because of the mining boom of the early 2010s,” he said.
“So coming into the end of 2019 and the start of 2020 with the start of the pandemic, WA was actually quite affordable for renters.
“Part of why we have seen such a strong growth was that it was quite affordable to begin with.
“That’s clearly not the case now and we’ve seen such an enormous increase in rents over recent years that WA is now quite expensive and quite unaffordable for renters.”
The Rent Affordability Index looks at the ability of households of different incomes to afford to pay rent across the nation. It is based on the share of rentals advertised as available to rent that households at each percentile of the income distribution could afford to rent each year, while spending 25 per cent of their pre-tax household income or less.
According to the report, a WA household earning the state’s median income of $129,000 could afford to rent just 24 per cent of all rentals advertised from July to December last year.
However, the state’s rental affordability did not decline over the past six months as much as Tasmania and Queensland, meaning it had moved from the third least affordable state to the second most affordable.
The report states that rental affordability is toughest in New South Wales, though most other states are not far behind. Victoria currently leads the affordability index and is followed by WA.
Moore said he does believe there is a silver lining for renters in WA.
“We have seen a bit of an improvement in availability,” he said.
“Vacancy rates are not as low as they were back in 2022 and 2023 and rent growth has slowed down.
“The pace of growth in Perth was about 7.5 per cent, which is still quite strong, but it is nothing like the pace we were seeing in the high teens just a few years ago.”
