The most affordable suburbs to rent a house in Canberra

With Canberra’s median asking rent for houses topping the list as the highest in the country, Canberra renters are feeling the pinch while on the hunt for a new home with many inspections drawing fierce competition. 

The extra space that houses offer over apartments is a big drawcard for families looking for that additional room for kids to play or simply entertain. But don’t lose heart just yet, there are still affordable suburbs to rent a house in the capital.

According to the Domain Rental Report for the December quarter 2019, the suburb of Belconnen led the charge as the most affordable with a median rental asking price of $440, up 6 per cent over the year.

This was followed by Jacka in Gungahlin and Holt in Belconnen with a median asking price of $460 per week, which is an increase of 2.2 per cent and 4.5 per cent year-on-year, respectively.

Badenoch Real Estate leasing manager Jayne Spice said there was a key factor driving the price and demand of houses in Belconnen.

“With many apartment blocks on the rise, it is becoming a more popular option in the Belconnen region,” she said.

“Whereas the housing rental market in Belconnen is quite underdeveloped in comparison.”

Spice says while Belconnen homes offer bigger blocks of land and proximity to the Westfield and town centre, the houses “tend to be older”.

“For tenants looking for properties that are quite modern, with both heating and cooling functions and a variety of other features, they may move further out to Tuggeranong to get that quality of housing,” she said.

The suburbs which round out the top five most affordable was Banks with a median rental price of $470 per week, up 4.4 per cent year-on-year, and Gordon at $475 per week, up 3.3 per cent the previous year. Both are in Tuggeranong.

On the other hand, the region with the most expensive house rents remained the Inner South with a median of $750 per week, unchanged over the quarter and previous year.

O’Malley was the most expensive, with a median rental asking price of $1400 per week, a 16.4 per cent decline the previous year. 

This was followed by Forrest at $963 per week, down 12.5 per cent year-on-year; and Denman Prospect in Weston Creek at $850 per week.

Spice anticipates Canberra’s median house rental prices will increase this next quarter “as we’ve seen in previous years”.

“This is the peak season for house rentals and we’ve seen that spike in the past two months which is quite standard for Canberra as people migrate to [the capital] at the start of the year.”

*Median rental house prices are derived from suburbs which have had more than 50 listings. There were not enough transactions in Denman Prospect to measure the median rental price for the December quarter 2019.