13 October 2017

Top 10 cheapest suburbs to rent a house in Canberra

| Glynis Quinlan
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Phillip, Belconnen and Charnwood are the cheapest places in Canberra to rent houses and townhouses according to realestate.com.au.

Following an analysis of rental data from realestate.com.au/rent for the 12 months to April 30, 2017, realestate.com.au has released a list of the 10 cheapest Canberra rental suburbs for houses and townhouses.

The list has some useful insights for Canberrans battling some of the highest rents in Australia. Census 2016 data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in late June showed that the ACT had the equal highest median rent of all states and territories.

Realestate.com.au report that the median price for Canberra’s cheapest rental suburbs for houses and townhouses ranges from $365 to $440 per week.

In order to qualify for the cheapest rental suburb list, a suburb must have had at least 10 properties listed for lease in the year prior to April 30.

Interestingly, most of the top 10 cheapest suburbs are still close to amenities. The top 10 list of Canberra’s cheapest rental suburbs is shown below.

1. Phillip – $365 per week
Located in Canberra’s south, the suburb of Phillip in Woden is close to shops, transport and schools. It comes in at number one as the median price to rent a standard house in Phillip is $365 per week.

2. Belconnen – $400 per week
The central hub of Belconnen in Canberra’s north comes in at number two, with a median rental price of $400 per week. Belconnen renters have easy access to Lake Ginninderra, Belconnen Mall and a range of cafes and restaurants.

3. Charnwood – $420 per week
Charnwood in Canberra’s north-west is the third cheapest suburb to rent, with a median price of $420 per week. The suburb of Charnwood is only 15 kilometres from Canberra’s CBD.

4. Page – $422.50 per week
A rental property in the suburb of Page attracts a median price of $422.50 per week – only 50 cents more than Charnwood. Page borders Belconnen and has easy access to Belconnen Mall and public transport.

5. Banks – $422.50 per week
Banks is the most southern suburb of Canberra and is close to reserves and parks. Banks has been listed in fifth place by realestate.com.au but actually has the same median rental price as Page at $422.50 per week.

6. Ngunnawal – $430 per week
Ngunnawal is part of Gungahlin and is located near the new light-rail line. It comes in at sixth place with rental properties having a median price of $430 per week.

7. Theodore – $432.50 per week
Theodore in Canberra’s south comes in at number seven. The suburb has lovely views of the Brindabellas and a median house rental price of $432.50.

8. Latham – $435 per week
Latham in the Belconnen district in Canberra’s north comes in at number eight, with a median house rental price of $435 per week.

9. Scullin – $440 per week
Also within the Belconnen district is the suburb of Scullin which comes in at number nine and has a median house rental price of $440 per week.

10. Richardson – $440 per week
Last on the realestate.com.au list of the top 10 cheapest suburbs for house rentals – but tying with Scullin – is Richardson in the Tuggeranong district in Canberra’s south which has a median house rental price of $440 per week.

Do you agree with this list or do you think there are cheaper suburbs to rent in? What have your experiences of Canberra’s rental market been like? Let us know in the comments below.

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phillipjmahoney3:43 pm 13 Oct 17

Hi bj_ACT, thanks for your comments on this story. I’m the media relations manager at realestate.com.au.
You’ve brought up some good points in your reply, so I thought it was worth responding to clear up any confusion that might be present.
The data reported in this is article is from realestate.com.au/rent, looking specifically at median rental prices for both houses and townhouses in Canberra’s suburbs. For the purpose of this story we have grouped houses and townhouses together, but left units and apartments out to avoid major skews in the data.
To qualify, suburbs must have had at least 10 properties listed for lease within that 12-month period on realestate.com.au.
In essence, these are the cheapest Canberra suburbs ranked in order to rent a house or townhouse on realestate.com.au.
As with any property decision, whether that’s buying, renting or even renovating, we would encourage people to do their research – on realestate.com.au, with other online sources, and by talking to friends, family and real estate agents.
As an aside, when we use data relating to property purchases such as median price, we always utilise industry data from CoreLogic, however this is not possible when dealing with rent data.
Hope this helps clear up some of your queries relating to the data.
Cheers,
Phil

I think there are some major flaws in this data.

Real estate.com.au are not properly collecting the housing data from Local Government Land and Planning and from ABS to calculate this claim. They rely on some dodgy flags and categories in their own limited web application.

As most Canberran’s would know there are not many houses in Phillip (ABS CENSUS say’s there are 3) but it is full of townhouses/units which will heavily skew this data. Belconnen is the same at Emu Bank with only 24 Houses (less than 1% of the Suburbs total dwellings).

I would ignore much of the data from realestate.com.au until they start undertaking proper data transformation and analysis that mixes their own data (which does have some advantages in what they collect) with key data sources from the State Land & Planning Agencies, ABS, Geocoded National Address File, etc. I have identified many flaws in this companies information that they regularly publicise via the media.

Check the CENSUS data and dwelling types at the bottom of these links for yourself:
http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC80108?opendocument
http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC80023?opendocument

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