Rental payment explained Place Forecast Feature
Abbreviated as RNTRD; referenced by 6 other explainers
Place Forecast Feature
Housing rental payments shows how much rent households pay each week. It counts rented dwellings, the rented homes people were living in on Census night.
These figures are Place Forecast estimates based on Census data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The 2016 and 2021 Censuses publish fourteen dollar groups, up to $950 and over. The lowest group is $1 to $74 a week in 2021. In 2011 and 2016 it is $0 to $74, so it also counts homes renting for nothing. The 2011 Census stopped at $650 and over, so for 2011 that one group holds every rent from $650 up. Not stated is a group of its own.
The amounts are the rents households said they paid in August of each Census year. Rents have risen since then.
Homes lived in rent free are not counted. Nor are homes that are owned. Look at landlord type to see who the homes are rented from. To see what owners pay, look at housing loan repayments. Social housing rents are often set as a share of income, so they sit in the lower groups.
Some forecasts can also show these rents by landlord type. The Census counts each dollar group by landlord type too. Those counts do not quite add up to the dollar groups, because of perturbation. So each dollar group's homes are shared across landlord types by those counts. Where those counts are all zero, the mix of the area around them is used. Then the landlord types are matched to the council's published counts. The landlord types in each dollar group add up to exactly that group's figure.
Not stated covers homes where the question was left blank.
Reading this data fairly
These figures show how people answered Census questions. Here are the equity caveats to keep in mind. They keep the numbers fair:
- Rent does not show income. The same rent can be easy for one household and hard for another. Rental affordability compares rent with income.
- The dollar groups are set by the ABS and can change from one Census to the next.
See the marker methodology for how these figures are calculated and their limitations.