In this landmark report released by the Student Accommodation Council it has been revealed that international students are not the cause of the housing crisis – making up only four per cent of Australia’s rental market Australia wide.
This is despite some public commentary asserting that the return of students to Australia post-covid are the main contributors to the record-low rental vacancy rates and rising rental costs.
The report finds that a complex web of supply and demand drivers are all contributing to Australia’s over-heated rental market.
These drivers include 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.
While international students have returned to Australia post-Covid, the increase in rents do not align with their return. In fact, rents began rising in 2020, when there was no international student migration and most students had returned home.
Between 2019 and 2023, median weekly rent increased by thirty per cent. Over the same period, student visa arrivals decreased by 13%.
The report also shows the current pipeline of new purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) developments will not meet future needs – with the projected 7,770 new beds due to come online by 2026 not enough to alleviate demand in the private rental market.
The report finds that in order to reduce the impact of international students on the rental market, we will need to increase the future supply pipeline of PBSA to 84,000 new beds by 2026.
