A Sydney woman blindsided by a $1400-per-month increase to her share house rent has revealed the grim email she received after trying to negotiate.
Chantelle Schmidt, 32, received a letter last week informing her the rent for her Redfern sharehouse will jump from $1900 to $2600 a fortnight.
The letter explained the reason for the rent increase was “to bring rent in line with what the current market is achieving”.
Ms Schmidt went viral after posting about her predicament on TikTok, later appearing on Nine’s Today show.
In an update on Thursday, she revealed that, “Yes, I have tried to negotiate.”
She posted a TikTok video showing an email exchange with her agent, in which she argued that $700 per fortnight was a “considerable and confronting increase for a three-bedroom house, shaking out to be an extra $230+ per room”.
“We’d love to come to a solution that reflects both the current market and the current financial pressure that inflation is having on us tenants,” she wrote.
The agent wrote back that she could try to negotiate with the landlord and asked for a counteroffer, but warned, “Please note that the market is strong at the moment and we would be able to achieve the increased amount should the property be readvertised at the moment.”
Ms Schmidt then sent the agent a link to a “nicer”, similar three-bedroom house in Redfern – which has three bathrooms instead of two and no construction on the street – being advertised for $2300 per fortnight, $300 lower than what her landlord was seeking.
“Given those differences, we believe that $2100 for our property is fair per fortnight,” she wrote. “This is still a considerable increase of $200 a fortnight.”
But just over an hour later, the agent wrote back.
“I have spoken to the landlord and unfortunately he was very stern about not negotiating the increase,” she said.
“The rent has been cheap for quite some time and we are confident that we could relet the property at the increased amount. Sorry I couldn’t be a bearer of better news.”
Commenters on TikTok were stunned.
“I am sorry, $4600/month for a three-bedroom house? That‘s 3x my mortgage,” one person wrote.
“I work with real estate [agencies] every day and I can tell you most of them are little snakes! Not all! But a considerable amount are! This is so wrong!” another said.
The freelance writer is now stuck either accepting the rent increase or looking at moving out.
However, if she and her housemates choose to move they will be struck with another hurdle as rental supply is significantly low, with just 31,000 residential rental properties available across the entire country.
“Everyone was saying move out, but you can’t,” she told the Today show on Wednesday.
After receiving the email from her landlord this earlier week notifying her of the upcoming rental increase, the journalist and podcast host shared a video to her TikTok account asking a burning question.
“Do you think it’s worth it?” she asked.
The video proceeded to show a series of maintenance repairs and concerns that Ms Schmidt has had with her rental property.
“Water damage, oh fun some mould, a loose floorboard,” she lists off, while pulling the floorboard loose from the floor.
“The walls are cooked,” she says showing more water damage running up a wall.
People responded in the comments section with many sharing her shock at the price hike.
“Omg no, it’s not worth it! Housing in Australia is out of control. This isn’t fair. Your landlord should be ashamed of themselves,” one person said.
“Move immediately,” another said.
“Even if the place was perfect, that’s an insane rent increase,” another wrote.
“You pay $1900 a fortnight for that. I was expecting a mansion,” a third said.
The rent hike comes as Sydneysiders struggle to secure a home.
Many videos have been shared on social media showing lines wrapping around city blocks every weekend as dozens of renters fight over the short supply of rental properties.
It comes as renters right across Sydney are experiencing major rent hikes due to rising interest rates putting pressure on homeowners.
Capital city asking rents are also continuing to rise across the country, with a 24.7 per cent increase over the past 12 months, and a 17.4 per cent rise in regional areas, according to new data from SQM Research.
Real Estate Institute of NSW Vice-President Leanne Pilkington said she understands why people are calling for a cap on rental prices in Australia.
“A 37 per cent increase is outrageous,” she told Today.
She said rents have gone up across the entire country by an average of about 10 per cent but over the course of the last two decades by about 40 per cent.
“I understand why people are calling for caps, but the problem is if investors can‘t afford their mortgage, then they will sell and then there will be even less supply,” she said.