PRICED OUT
Melbourne’s International Students Caught in the Rental Crisis
With unit rents hitting a record $575 per week and vacancy rates near historic lows, international students in Melbourne are having a very hard time finding affordable housing. Many are competing against dozens of other renters while also trying to keep up with study and part-time work.
By Yanzhe Wang
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Leo Zhang sinks into a worn sofa in a crowded Pascoe Vale share house, scrolling through yet another rental listing on his phone. It is 10pm on a Wednesday, and the 24-year-old Master’s student at the University of Melbourne has just finished a four-hour shift at a city restaurant. He has already inspected three apartments this week. All of them had more than 15 applicants. He did not get a single callback.
“I budget about $420 a week for rent,” Leo says, tapping on a listing for a studio in Brunswick. “$480 a week. After tax, my part-time wage covers about $300, the rest comes from my family. If rent goes up again, I don’t know what I’ll do. Asking my parents for more feels terrible.”
A Market Under Pressure
Leo’s experience is far from unique. Melbourne’s rental market has become much tighter over the past three years, pushing housing costs beyond what thousands of international students can afford. According to Domain’s latest rent report, Melbourne unit rents reached a record $575 per week in early 2025 — the biggest quarterly increase of all Australian capital cities. In student-heavy suburbs like Carlton, Brunswick and Footscray, median weekly rents now go past $600, with some areas seeing year-on-year jumps of more than 20 per cent.
The vacancy rate tells an even more worrying story. Melbourne’s residential vacancy rate has hovered around 1.4 to 1.5 per cent in early 2026, according to SQM Research data. This is close to historic lows and well below the 3 per cent level that is usually seen as a healthy market. For every available rental property, there are dozens of people applying, and international students, who do not have local rental histories or full-time jobs, often end up at the back of the queue.
Across Australia, rents went up by 6.4 per cent in the year to December 2024, and then another 5.5 per cent to February 2025, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The problem has become so serious that it is now a political issue. In his 2025 budget speech, Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that the fast growth in international student numbers was putting pressure on housing and rents. In April 2025, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced that, if elected, the Coalition would cut international student numbers by about 80,000 as part of its plan to ease the rental crisis.
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Leo is one of more than 200,000 international students currently studying in Victorian institutions — a group that contributed $14.8 billion to the state’s economy in 2023 alone, making international education Victoria’s second-largest export. Yet many of these students say they feel left behind by a housing system that was never really set up for people like them.
“I tried to move, but it is almost impossible. One house can have 20 applicants. We always end up at the bottom — no local credit history, no full-time job. My parents help with tuition, but rent is on me. I work 12 hours a week at $28 an hour, and after tax more than half of that goes straight to rent. The rest comes from home, but I don’t want to ask for more.”
- Leo Zhang, 24, Master’s student, University of Melbourne
Another University of Melbourne student, Rohan Patel, 21, from Mumbai, said he had been sleeping on a friend’s couch for three weeks after his previous lease ended and he could not secure a new rental within his budget. “I applied for 12 places in one month,” Patel said. “I offered to pay three months upfront. Still nothing. The agents do not even reply to my emails anymore.”
Blame or Supply?
While some politicians have pointed to international students as the cause of the rental crisis, researchers argue the real problem is something else. A 2025 study by Dr Hannah Soong and Dr Guanglun Michael Mu from the University of South Australia analysed 76 datasets from 2017 to 2024 and found that across Australia, rental prices actually tended to go down when international student numbers went up.
“The idea that international students drive up rents is not correct. It takes attention away from the real problem: a long-term shortage of housing. Blaming a group of people who are already struggling does nothing to fix the real issues in Australia’s housing market.”
- Dr Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Education Futures, University of South Australia
The supply-side argument is supported by market data. According to SQM Research, new rental construction has not kept up with population growth, while rising building costs and construction companies going bankrupt have delayed or cancelled projects across Melbourne. Build-to-rent developments, which are often talked about as a long-term fix, are still only in early stages and will not help the situation right now.
Where to Turn for Help
For international students dealing with housing problems, there are places to go for help. Tenants Victoria, a not-for-profit organisation, provides free legal advice and runs the Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria (RDRV) service for tenancy disagreements. The International Student Employment and Accommodation Legal Service (ISEAL), run through West Justice, offers free and confidential advice specifically for international students facing accommodation issues.
Monash University’s accommodation services provide on-campus housing options at the Clayton and Peninsula campuses, as well as off-campus housing advice through the Monash Residential Services team. Study Melbourne, a Victorian Government initiative, also publishes guides on tenant rights and responsibilities for international students.
Back in Pascoe Vale, Leo Zhang has one more inspection to attend before his current lease expires in three weeks. He is not optimistic. “I came to Australia because I wanted a good education,” he says, checking his phone for the bus schedule. “I did not expect that just finding a place to sleep would be the hardest part.”
