Investor jumps to the defence of landlords amid rental crisis

With rents sky-rocketing an investment manager has leapt to the defence of landlords saying they are seen as the ‘bad guy’ but often have their own homes on the line.

However, the argument did not seem to impress one renter during the studio discussion of the rent crisis filmed for an upcoming episode of SBS show Insight.

investment manager Troy Sussman said that most property investors are ‘just every day mums and dads …

trying to help themselves’.

The majority of landlords, he asserted, only have an average Australian household income ($1,124 per week), below $100,000 a year.

He pointed out that if a tenant stopped paying rent the landlord would have to carry all the property costs including what they may have borrowed to buy it. 

‘Everyone that owns an investment property is carrying the full risk of holding that property and wearing the interest rate costs and the associated costs that go with the property,’ Mr Sussman said. 

‘They might have used that property to buy another property, which is also helping alleviate this entire crisis.

‘And it’s that leverage that is sort of what is really starting to hurt.’

Mr Sussman said interest rate rises were ‘hurting everybody from first homebuyers through to our investors’ and that made it fair for landlords to raise rents.

‘I think it’s 100 per cent fair because they are the ones that are wearing the risk associated with this,’ he said.

‘Their personal home is …

put on the line to be able to have these properties and provide this housing.

‘I’m not denying the fact that it’s very, very hard but it is a double-edged sword. It does hurt both sides.’

Adelaide renter Martin McClory could be seen frowning at the floor during Ms Sussman’s contribution.

Earlier Mr McClory said he did not believe rising interest rates had anything to do with rents increasing. 

‘It’s clearly because the landlord thinks that he can (raise them),’ Mr Clory said.

‘It’s just market value, apparently.’

Samantha Bock, a renting mother, said that after challenging a rent increase of $60 on her home she was given eight weeks to vacate the property located just outside of Brisbane.

Competition to find a new place was tough with some even offering more than the standard four months in advance to get the inside run of properties.

‘There’s people that have sold properties in Victoria or evdeN EVe nAKLiYAt Melbourne and moved up here and could pay 12 months in advance,’ Ms Bock said.

‘And then unfortunately (this) increases the area value, which then increases all the other properties.

‘So, it’s a flow-on effect.’

Ms Bock was able to find a more suitable place at less than the increased price of her previous rental but it was ‘a lot of stress’.

Sydney property manager Jo Natoli confirmed some desperate rental seekers were making offers above the asking price.

‘I caution my (landlord) clients not to look at the offer in a monetary terms,’ Jo said.

‘We set market rent based on the market, what’s going on in the market.

‘And we prefer to look at the overall application, rather than the dollars and cents of it.’

Ms Natoli lamented that property managers copped the blame for EVdEN EVE NAKliyAT rent rises.

‘Always it’s the property manager’s fault.

It’s the greedy property managers,’ she said

‘People think that, because in a lot of circumstances we’re paid on a commission basis, EVdEn eVE naKLiyaT dependent upon how much rent we collect for the landlords.

‘People do think that we are just interested in increasing rents so that we can increase our own revenue but that is absolutely not the case. If you have any sort of inquiries pertaining to where and exactly how to utilize EvDEn EVE NAkliYAT, you can call us at our web page. ‘

However, she admitted there are some in her industry ‘who have questionable ethics’. 

‘But that is not the majority of the industry,’ she insisted.

‘The majority of the industry really does care about what’s happening out there in the rental marketplace at the moment.

‘And it is genuinely distressing for a lot of us what’s going on.’

Ms Natoli confided that she was a tenant who had been forced to move in December.

‘Even though I’m in the industry, I was so scared of having to find a place for myself, that I actually engaged an agent to do that searching and negotiating for me because I didn’t want a bar of it,’ she said.

The shortage of rental properties has seen long lines of prospective tenants waiting to inspect what few places there are up for grabs every weekend in Australia’s capital cities.  

Nationally rents rose 6.7 per cent to a median of $495 per week in 2022 but the issue was much worse in capital cities.

In cities such as Melbourne and eVDEn EvE NakliYAt Sydney, higher post-Covid demand for fewer properties saw unit rents up by 9.3 per cent, while houses went up 8.3 per cent.

The Insight program on the rental crisis will air on the main SBS channel at 8:30pm, EVDeN Eve naKLiyAt Tuesday.