Our shire lays claim to some records we can be proud of, but this is not one of them.
Noosa is officially ground zero of the rental crisis, with Queensland’s most disastrous figures for rental unaffordability.
The postcode of 4567 – which takes in Noosa Heads, Noosa Springs, Sunshine Beach, Sunrise Beach and Castaways – has a median rent that’s nearly 51 percent of the average income for rental households across Queensland of $101,958.
Remember that 30 percent of income is the benchmark for rental stress. At just under 51 percent In Noosa the stress is stratospheric. At the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 the figure had already risen to 31.9 percent. Since then it has jumped to 50.9 percent.
SGS Economics and Planning, and the peak housing body National Shelter have revealed the nation’s most expensive places to rent and the neighbourhoods with the biggest rent hikes since the pandemic.
Nowhere else in Queensland is this affordability crisis quite so bad, or rising quite so quickly.
Next door, the postcode of 4565 – which takes in Tewantin, Noosa North Shore and up to Boreen Point and Cooroibah – is nearly as bad, with median rents of 40 percent of average statewide income and also in the category of “extremely unaffordable”. Here the figure rose from 26.8 percent in 2020.
In Noosaville – postcode – 4566 – rents are categorised as “very unaffordable”. Here the rental stress figure has jumped from 30.3 percent of statewide average income in 2020 …to 41.1 percent just four years later.
Peregian Beach and Marcus Beach were listed as ‘unaffordable” with median rents at just under 40 percent of average household income for the rest of Queensland, but this is almost certainly an anomaly as they were lumped in with the (slightly) less expensive postcode for Coolum and surrounds. In reality, Peregian Beach is as unaffordable as the beach suburbs just to its North.
The rest of Noosa Shire’s hinterland was listed as ‘unaffordable. Postcode 4568 which takes in Pomona, Pinbarren and Cooran saw median rent rise from 30.percent of average statewide household income in 2020 to 37.5 percent. Postcode 4563 – which includes Cooroy, Tinbeerwah and Lake MacDonald – saw a rise from 28.3 percent in 2020 to median rent of 39 percent of average income.
Most residents are aware by now of the devastating social impact of the wave of Short Term Accommodation that has gripped Noosa, removing thousands of apartments and houses from the long term rental pool and driving up rents for the diminished number remaining.
This is ground zero of both the rental unaffordability crisis AND the STA tsunami that has swallowed up the pool of long-term rentals. This is not a coincidence.
It’s a reminder, if ever one was needed, that Noosa needs to work harder with the limited tools at its disposal to reduce the number of STA’s – the vast majority of them owned outside the shire – and bring more homes back into the long-term rental pool.
