Kochie is shocked after Sunrise cohost reveals personal battle trends now
Sunrise host Monique Wright has revealed she's inspected 30 rental properties but has failed to secure a home amid Australia's deepening rental crisis.
Vacancy rates for rental properties have plummeted to record lows, with Melbourne now experiencing a tighter rental market than Sydney.
'We've recently been looking, and we've looked at 30 properties,' Wright, 49, told her co-hosts David Koch and Natalie Barr, following a segment on rentals.
'It is appalling. It is so appalling,' the presenter continued amid gasps of shock.
'You see it. People are desperate. We've been desperate.'
'At every price point, exactly,' Barr agreed.
'Amazing,' a visibly shocked Kochie said.
Sunrise host Monique Wright (pictured) has revealed she's inspected 30 rental properties but failed to find a home amid Australia's deepening rental crisis
Families struggling to find a home, some of whom who have been forced into living in tents or sleeping in cars will take no comfort from learning that renting a property in Australia has not been this hard since the Great Depression.
The nation's rental crisis is so dire that housing experts say the official records show no comparable shortage of available tenancies since the 1930s.
The vacancy rate in Sydney and Melbourne dropped to just 1 per cent in January, which is a record-low level for both markets.
The only real reference point to what is happening in the rental market now is the worldwide social catastrophe which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929 - and became the longest, deepest depression of the 20th century.
Landlords in Sydney, Australia's biggest city, have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of an increasingly tight rental market, with migrants and international students returning again.
Chief executive officer of the Tenants' Union of New South Wales, Leo Patterson Ross, said while the broader economic circumstances of 90 years ago were vastly different, the Great Depression reference was applicable as rental prices spiral.
'We really have to go back and look at periods like the Great Depression to find comparable situations for renters in Australia at the moment,' Mr Patterson Ross said.
'Obviously we're not in the Great Depression. But we we have to go back that far because we haven't seen this kind of widespread general experience of the system going wrong.
Shocking images of dozens of prospective tenants turning up to auctions and inspections in some of Sydney's most desirable suburbs have gone viral.
Lines were snaking around the block to view properties in Zetland, Coogee and Randwick, with up to 70 people vying for some apartments.
Rising interest rates were passed onto renters by landlords and prices keep rising to meet the level of desperation.
Renters claim they have no power against landlords increasing rents or evicting them. Some of those who cannot find a home feel in physical danger on top of the normal mental anguish of being under such economic stress.
City dwellers moving to regional areas squeeze an already tight rental market in those regions, displacing local residents.
Properties used as short-term rentals and holiday homes that remain empty most of the year make the shortage evens worse.
Professor Gurran said it was not just low income earners facing the pinch.
'Particularly in the wake of the floods and the bushfires we've
