Renting in Victoria 2025

Insights from frontline community sector workers

Victoria has nation-leading protections for renters.  

So why is it that renters continue to experience insecurity, housing stress, and discrimination in the market? 

Across Australia, tax and policy settings, coupled with decades of under-investment in social housing for people on very low and low incomes,¹ have created a perfect storm.  

Australia is now the second most-expensive nation for housing globally, and Melbourne is one of four major markets in Australia identified as “impossibly unaffordable”². 

The decline in rental affordability is particularly pronounced. In many areas of Victoria, the median rental rate is no longer affordable relative to the income of an average rental household.³  

This is exacerbated by the mismatch between demand for social housing rentals and supply. Victoria has the lowest proportion of social housing in Australia. This has pushed more low-income Victorians into the private rental market, where they compete with higher-income renters, including those who have been shut out of home ownership. 

Many renters also face increasing energy, food and health costs. Meanwhile, Commonwealth Government income supports have not kept pace with these rising costs, adding to housing stress.   

These market conditions are putting Victoria’s rental fairness reforms to the test.  

In a housing system in which demand continues to outstrip supply, the power imbalance between rental providers, property managers and renters persists.  

VCOSS’ fourth annual Renting in Victoria report provides insights from the community sector workers who are on the frontline of this crisis, supporting vulnerable renters.  

In this year’s report, workers highlight: 

• Persistent housing stress for renters due to frequent rent increases. 

• Renters struggling to find suitable and affordable properties.  

• Rental properties failing to comply with mandatory minimum standards. 

• Renters facing barriers to raising renting issues. 

Community sector workers tell us that a lack of affordable rental housing and rent increases are compounding other cost-of-living pressures, pushing more renters further into housing stress and the most vulnerable renters into poverty.  

Workers describe a market in which renters often feel they are ‘treading on eggshells’, with anxieties constantly looming in relation to rent increases, evictions, and – if they leave a rental – fear of receiving a bad reference.  

This is despite the Victorian Government’s strong policy commitment to making renting fairer and safer, and tranches of legislative and regulatory reform over multiple years, including: 

• Limitations around evictions. 

• Limitations around rent increases (limited to once every 12 months). 

• Specific protections for victim survivors of family violence. 

• Higher standards for amenity, thermal comfort and energy efficiency.  

This report recommends further actions that the Victorian Government and the regulator, Consumer Affairs Victoria, can take to: 

• Realise the full potential of existing laws and regulations.  

• Introduce additional legislative and regulatory reforms, to better respond to market trends and close emerging gaps in renter protections. 

• Increase the supply of rental housing to alleviate pressure in the market – in particular, this report recommends measures to grow social housing.   

These recommendations are intended to augment existing Victorian Government commitments – including reforms that will be phased in from November this year, as part of the Consumer and Planning Legislation Amendment (Housing Statement Reform) Act 2025, including:  

• Establishing clearer and stronger criteria for rental increases when assessed by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).  

• Compulsory minimum standards for advertised rentals. 

• Stronger penalties for real estate misconduct. 

• Mandatory licensing, registration and education and professional development requirements for estate agents and agents’ representatives.  

One-third of Victorians now rent. It’s vital Victoria continues to maintain the momentum on fairer, safer renting.  

1. Victoria has the lowest rate of social housing of any Australian jurisdiction – see the Victorian
Housing Peaks Alliance report, Growing Social Housing, which provides data insights commissioned
from SGS Economics and Planning, Growing Social Housing.
2. Gruber, J 2025, ‘Australian house prices close in on world record’, Firstlinks, Australian house prices
close in on world record.
3. Commission for Residential Tenancies and SGS Economics and Planning, ‘Renting in Victoria: 2024
Snapshot’, https://files.rentingcommissioner.vic.gov.au/2025-04/Renting%20in%20Victoria%20Snapshot%202024.pdf.