We've expanded our homes search tool to include Melbourne and most of Greater Victoria. Unfortunately we haven't had a chance to do the same with our suburbs search tool.
For those of you unfamiliar with our tools, they help you to find a place to live by searching based on value. That is, searches are not restricted to a particular suburb, but instead consider everywhere and allow you to enter whether you prefer someplace cheaper, closer, and/or safer. That way, you can easily search an entire city and find the best value home for you.
You could only look at some of the cheaper suburbs like Braybrook, Albion, and Footscray, but you might be able to find a closer deal elsewhere with our tool.
Today we're pleased to announce a new tool to help you find the best place to rent in Sydney. This is not just helping you find a suburb, but going further to help you find a specific home. Even within a suburb, you will find a bit of variation on the prices and commute times, so that why we developed this new product. Whether you're looking for a cheap rental, a safe place to live, or an apartment close to work, the new tool should be able to help you out.
It's been in development for almost a year, and the test version has been available for about three months. It works pretty much the same as our tool for finding the best suburbs in sydney, but with a few more options for things like bathrooms and parking. The interface was redone from the ground up, so hopefully the search experience is a little smoother. Give it a try and leave us feedback using the buttons at the top.
According to the latest report from Housing NSW, the cheapest postcode in Sydney is 2163 (Villawood) where the median one-bedroom rental is only $150 per week. In 2760 (St. Marys) and 2747 (Kingswood), the median two-bedder is twice that, at $300 per week, but in 2770 (Mount Druitt) the median three-bedroom rental is only $50 more at $350 per week and a four-bedder at $430 per week. The median two-bedder in 2753 (Richmond) is $295 per week, so that's a little cheaper than St. Marys and Kingswood, but it's a bit further from Sydney CBD.
Cheapest Suburb in Sydney
1 br
Villawood NSW 2163
$150
2 br
St. Marys NSW 2760
$300
Kingswood NSW 2747
3 br
Mount Druitt NSW 2770
$350
4 br
Mount Druitt NSW 2770
$430
2 br
Richmond NSW 2753
$295
While the median price information per postcode comes from Housing NSW's report, we had to do a little bit of work to figure out which postcodes are in Sydney and which suburbs are in each postcode. This report on its own is not very useful. finderful.com combines this report with safety and travel time data to help you find the best suburbs for you. Check it out.
The theory is that offering this tax incentive results in a bigger supply of investment properties and therefore lower rents. The counter-theory is that investors outbid owner-occupiers who stay as renters increasing the demand and therefore higher rents.
in Sydney
In Australia, negative gearing was introduced in 1985, limited in July 1985, and restored in September 1987. Let's see what impact this had on rents around that time. In the interactive charts below, you can see the increase in the rental index numbers for Sydney and Australia. It's clear that Sydney outpaced the rest of Australia during this time, but whether the introduction of negative gearing had an effect (and what that effect was) I leave to you to decide. Contact us if you want a different visualisation of this data.
The chart below shows the year-to-year change in the index. This information is available in TABLE 12. CPI: Group, Sub-group and Expenditure Class, Percentage change from corresponding quarter of previous year by Capital City, but I have calculated it from TABLE 11.
The chart below shows the difference of the rent index change and the "All groups excluding Housing" index change. This lets us see rent increases aligned with the rest of CPI. Here I have smoothed it for the change from the corresponding quarter of two years earlier.
I've also added some shading so you can see the corresponding time period of some financial policy changes.
Thesaurus.com has 49 synonyms for "best" or "most excellent". Among them are finest, first, leading, outstanding, perfect, terrific, and tough1. When you say "best", you don't really mean any of those. You mean some combination of price and location. You mean the most valuable, where "value" has a fuzzy definition.
Suburbs in Sydney
Wikipedia has a [long] "listing of the suburbs and localities in the greater Sydney area". This list (and the corresponding definition) don't include some places I know people commute from, such as Helensburgh and the Blue Mountains. So if you're one of those people who is willing to commute from outside the greater Sydney area, you're not really looking for a suburb in Sydney. You're looking for a place you can commute from, wherever that may be.
finderful.com gives you the best suburbs in Sydney, tailored to your definition of "best" and "in Sydney". Give it a try.
Unfortunately I can't really tell you the cheapest suburbs to rent in Sydney as that really depends on you and what you mean by each of those subphrases:
Cheapest
You don't really want the absolute cheapest suburb. At some point, you'll be willing to pay a little extra to get a safer suburb or one closer to Sydney CBD. So what you really want is the best value, but that's a little harder to define, or is it?
You wouldn't consider a suburb with only one listing a year as a place you could stay. So while it might appear to be the cheapest suburb in sydney, it's unlikely that the one rental price is an accurate measure of that suburb. You can only consider a suburb based on a significant number of rentals, so which ones are those?
In Sydney
"Sydney" means different areas in different contexts. It could mean CBD, the City of Sydney, the inner city, everything east of greater western Sydney, the greater Sydney area, the electoral district of Sydney, the division of Sydney, and probably heaps of others I can't even think of. So when you're thinking to live in Sydney, exactly where are you considering?
finderful.com can help you answer those questions. Just answer a few questions and adjust the controls to help you find the best value suburb for you. You can look at the price trends to see which suburbs have fluctuating prices and which change slowly. If you're looking at areas outside of Sydney, just type in a place you want to be near and let finderful.com figure out the rest.
If you've been looking to rent a house in Sydney, you've noticed that house prices are astronomical here. But you have no choice; you have to live somewhere. Of course you want the cheapest place you can get, but how cheap is too cheap? What are you giving up to save a few bucks? Distance to Sydney CBD is a pretty big factor in the price of a house, but what if you rarely plan to go to Sydney CBD? Given two equally distant houses at similar prices price, what's the next factor you would consider? Is it safety? As the factors stack up, so does the complexity of your decision. What are the best value suburbs in Sydney for you?
You need to get data on each factor, and you need to decide the value of each factor on your decision. Ultimately, you want to know where in Sydney you should be looking, as you can't reasonably inspect every rental property in Sydney. This is where finderful.com comes in. It already has data, and some controls to input the value of each factor. All you have to do is enter an area you want to live near, and decide on the value of each factor, and leave the rest to the algorithm to make suggestions for you.
Rent prices are generally more expensive as you get closer to the City of Sydney and closer to the beaches (eastwards). As you go out further west, it gets cheaper, but there are still areas out west where it is expensive.
Deciding between a house or a unit is mostly a personal decision. Generally, houses are three or more bedrooms and units are two or fewer. Closer to the City of Sydney, there are more units available for rent than houses. The same goes for any commercial area (e.g. train stations, shopping centres, etc.) Further away, there are more houses available than units.
Time to City of Sydney
Time is an important factor for many people. Sydney of course has a public transportation system, but unless you are going to or from the City of Sydney, it can be a hassle. Even to/from the city, there are many areas where there is no (or slow) direct transportation and it is faster to change to a "limited stops" train along the way.
You can use finderful.com to find an area personalised to your time and price preferences. Just enter an address to which you will often travel, and use the controls to adjust your preferences.
So you're going to move to Sydney, huh? And you want to rent a house in Sydney? Well, you should know Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Here's some easy steps you can take to ease your move into Sydney:
finderful.com
You can start with finderful.com to get an idea of how much it will cost you each week to live in Sydney. Rent will be your biggest expense. Be sure to know the how much money you can save by extending your commute time. The site doesn't yet have a way to separate houses from flats/units, but generally houses are three or four bedrooms and flats/units are one or two bedrooms.
Once you've got some suburbs in mind, you can get some detailed insights on those areas from 52 suburbs.
Sydney Moving Guide
Everything You Need for Your Move to Sydney in One Place. Money, Apartments, Shipping, Schools, Jobs, Insurance, Visas, etc. You name it, Sydney Moving Guide's got you covered.
