Rent when I moved to Sydney in 2014 was less than $200 for my housemate and me in a two-bedder in the Inner-West. It wasn’t overly fancy, but it had the essentials.

In 2024, I looked at a one-bedder in the same complex I first lived in 10 years ago – it was going for $480 a week. No balcony. No car spot. No internal laundry. Directly under a flight path, and not within walking distance of a supermarket or other amenities. But it was only $480 a week.

Just days before, I received a call about a small studio I applied for. But I missed the call because I was in a work meeting. When I called the real estate back - 11 minutes later - I was told it had already been offered to the next best applicant.

I found myself applying for another studio apartment for $495 a week. “It doesn’t have an oven or any storage space,” I told some friends. “But you can live without an oven for 12 months, right?”

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A lot of people seemed to think the same, because I watched fellow singles, couples, and even young families take a look around the small studio space and deem it acceptable enough to live in - maybe because it was a rare find for under $500 a week. We went up in shifts, 10-15 people at a time cramming into a tiny elevator in the hopes we’d secure this “bargain”.

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Maybe it didn’t matter that the blinds were broken and stuck, with a makeshift curtain hanging over the top, indicating that no further maintenance work would be done. You could definitely survive with an air-fryer and microwave and forgo an oven. And living out of a bar fridge surely wouldn’t be that hard? Plus, once you sell half your possessions to fit into the small space, you’d basically be able to afford one week of rent, stress-free.

When I exited, there were still crowds of people lining up, ready to offer whatever it took to secure the studio.

“It’s an absolute steal considering the prices of everything right now,” one man with a measuring tape enthusiastically told the real estate agent on his way out - a positive indication that we’ve all lost our minds.

This is the current state of Sydney’s rental crisis.

Believe it or not, I’m one of the fortunate ones right now. While I’ve been rejected from all of the places I’ve applied for so far in January, I am a single, 33-year-old woman, on a steady income, with no pets, non-smoker, and a great rental history, and I don’t face the pressure of having a young family to feed or the worry about having to take care of anyone other than myself.