A new report asserts that there is no basis for blaming international students for an undersupply of housing or for rising rental fees in Australia. Research commissioned by the Student Accommodation Council, a peak body for the country’s purpose-built student accommodation sector (PBSA), found no alignment between the return of international students to Australia – after borders reopened post-pandemic – and rents increasing.
Instead, says the report, entitled Myth busting international students’ role in the rental crisis, “rents began rising in 2020, when there was no international student migration and most students had returned home.” There is data to back the point: “Between 2019 and 2023, median weekly rent increased by thirty per cent. Over the same period, student visa arrivals decreased by 13%.”
Student Accommodation Council executive director Torie Brown writes in the report: “International students have been unfairly blamed for the rental crisis, yet this report shows that long-term structural issues in Australia's housing market are the real cause for rental pressures.”
Only 4% more international students arrived in Australia between June 2019 and June 2023, but the median rent surged by 24%. Source: The Student Accommodation Council
The research found that international students make up only 4% of all renters in Australia. Domestic students compose 6.2%, and the remainder are non-students. What’s more, the vast majority of international students do not live in the housing most in demand in Australia. Only 3% live in detached houses suitable for couples or families, while 74% live in PBSA close to universities.
The Student Accommodation Council attributes the housing crisis in Australia to “a complex web of supply and demand drivers …. including the rise of smaller and solo-person households, intrastate migration, rising construction costs, planning delays and a trend to re-purposing second bedrooms into home offices, amongst others.”
Now that international students have returned, however, there is a great need for increasing the supply of purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Vacancy rates in major Australian cities are currently around 1%, and rental prices have been climbing for months.
Unfortunately, the Student Accommodation Council says that looking at the pipeline of new PBSA currently (7,770 new beds), there will not be enough supply to ease pressure on the rental market from international students by 2026. That would only be accomplished if there were 84,000 beds ready by that time.
