Give me statistics of young people rental rates currently compared to 1980 statistics. Victoria Australia only
Executive summary
Young Victorians face dramatically different rental conditions today than in 1980: real rents across Australia rose modestly from 1980 to 2022 (about 20% in constant‑quality measures), while contemporary Victorian markets—especially Melbourne—now show steep year‑on‑year increases and tenure insecurity that disproportionately hit young people [1] [2]. Available Victorian datasets and government snapshots document a large rise in the number of renter households since the late 20th century, but direct, age‑cohort comparable “young people” rent series for 1980 versus 2025–26 are not published in the provided sources and so some inference is required [3] [4].
1. What the long‑run research says about rents since 1980
National academic work that compiles series from 1980 to 2023 finds that constant‑quality real housing rents rose by roughly 20% between 1980 and early 2023, and that rental yields have fallen substantially from the 1980s to the 2010s—evidence that rents grew less explosively in real terms than house prices over that period [1].
2. How Victoria’s rental stock and renter numbers changed since the 1980s
Victorian official reporting shows a structural shift: the number of households renting in Victoria grew far faster than total households in the two decades to 2016 (renting households up more than 60% versus overall household growth of just over 40%), indicating a much larger share of the population living in private rentals today than in earlier decades [3].
3. The contemporary picture for young renters in Victoria
Advocacy reporting for young people in Victoria highlights acute tenure insecurity and affordability pressure: Victoria has the highest rate of month‑by‑month leases (22% of renters) and young renters often move frequently—many spending on average less than one year in a rental—while Melbourne median rents were reported at about $526 per week and rising sharply year‑on‑year (an 11% annual rise cited) [2].
4. What can reasonably be inferred about “young people rental rates” versus 1980
Combining the national real‑rent rise (~20% up to 2023) with Victoria’s structural shift to more renters and the contemporary spike in advertised and achieved rents in Melbourne suggests young Victorians are paying substantially more in nominal terms and more burdensome shares of income now than in 1980; however, none of the supplied sources publishes an explicit age‑cohort series showing the average rent paid by “young people” in Victoria in 1980 for direct one‑to‑one comparison, so any precise numeric comparison by age group cannot be produced from these sources alone [1] [2] [4].
5. Short‑term drivers and why young people are more exposed now
Recent drivers—post‑pandemic migration rebounds, strong international student and migrant inflows, tight advertised supply and low vacancy rates—have pushed demand up in Melbourne and Victoria and sharply tightened affordability, a dynamic repeatedly cited in ABS analysis and contemporary reporting and captured in rental vacancy metrics and commentary that warn affordability pressures will remain acute into 2026 [5] [6] [7] [8].
6. Caveats, competing narratives and data gaps
Policy and commercial commentaries frame solutions differently—government rental datasets and the Commissioner’s snapshots focus on supply and tenure trends [4] [3], advocacy groups emphasise youth insecurity [2], while industry pieces stress migration and supply shortfalls and promote policy fixes like build‑to‑rent [9]; importantly, no source in the supplied reporting provides a clean, directly comparable statistic that states “average weekly rent paid by Victorians aged X in 1980 was Y and today is Z,” so conclusions about young people must be read as synthesis of national real‑rent trends, Victorian renter growth, and contemporary youth‑targeted indicators rather than exact cohort‑to‑cohort numeric replication [1] [3] [2] [4].