Wanted: A rental without a leaky roof or wine stains on the carpet. Am I too fussy?

My first living out-of-home experience was in a terrace in the inner-city. It was a decaying, mould-riddled property that probably should have been condemned. There was one bathroom between five people, the kitchen was an add-on that had a perspex roof and no insulation. Natural light was non-existent, and the fourth “bedroom” was an attic you couldn’t stand up in. I loved it.

I went on the lease with two friends and together we gleefully filled it with second-hand furniture that, like the house itself, had seen better days. We didn’t care about the many problems – we were just thrilled to be living independently and have somewhere to throw parties without parental oversight.

After a couple of years, I outgrew the terrace. Having landed my first full-time job, I decided to seek an environment that didn’t involve strangers coming back to my house at 2am on a Wednesday.

Now I had a slightly bigger budget, my list of living requirements grew to include things like “no obvious mould” and “a real roof”.

With every move I made over the following decade, the requirement list evolved. After living in an apartment in which the water pressure was so bad that it turned washing my hair into a great burden, I began testing showers at every potential rental.

And after living in an apartment with no outdoor space and feeling constantly claustrophobic, I no longer look at properties that don’t at least have a small balcony.

I also used to be fine with stained carpets, but now frown upon any – and absolutely never in the living space, where one spilled glass of red wine becomes a bond-stealing disaster. I need a decent-sized kitchen since I’ve moved on from my years of eating takeaway five days a week, and the cost of living has taken that option firmly off the table anyway.

After living in Sydney’s inner-west for a year without air conditioning, I consider at least one unit as mandatory. And now that I’m expecting a baby, a dishwasher has become an essential.

Listing all of this, I understand I might come across as picky. But these requirements have been such a subtle development over so many years that it wasn’t until my current rental hunt that I realised how selective I’ve become.

Then again, I’m nearing 40, and have been paying rent for almost 20 years. Is it unreasonable to believe that, even if not a place of luxury, a home should at least be a place of comfort?

In Sydney, the rental vacancy rate for March 2025 was just 0.9 per cent. In Melbourne, it was 1.2 per cent – both well shy of the recommended 3 per cent mark. Perhaps then, the problem is not that I have too many requirements, but that I have any at all.

In previous generations, people my age would have long owned their own property and be altering it to their unique living specifications. If I owned an apartment, I’d be installing air conditioning, buying a dishwasher, and ripping up the carpet because I’d have the right to. Instead, I’m still in the rental market, searching for what feels like a unicorn. But with the average age of first-home buyers now pushed to 36, I’m clearly not the only one stuck renting but no longer wanting to live like I did when this journey began.

So, I started revisiting my list. The dishwasher was the first to go. Hand-washing all those baby bottles will be annoying, sure, but it opened up a few more options. My desire for a decent-sized kitchen has become a search for something with an oven, a stove top and a skerrick of bench space to prepare food.

Putting air conditioning on the chopping block nearly doubled the number of available rentals in my area. Maybe we don’t need it, I thought.

But then we went to a friend’s house on a hot, humid summer night. The place was a sauna. It felt as if I was sitting inside an oven on the “roast” setting. Even with five fans blasting (yes, five), there was no relief, only stagnant air recirculating.

I turned to my partner. “We are not doing no air con again,” I said, fanning myself frantically with whatever I could get my hands on.

It used to be that the great Australian dream was owning a quarter-acre block with a standalone house. Now, it’s somewhere with a roof that doesn’t leak, a working bathroom, kitchen and an air-con unit, all for a price that doesn’t require selling an organ. It doesn’t feel like too much to ask for, but in our major cities, apparently it is.

Melissa Mason is a freelance writer and podcaster based in Sydney.

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