Rent price rises at 20-year high

• Landlords putting squeeze on tenants
• Rents have recorded their highest increase since 1988 amid signs the rental crisis will only get worse.

Latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the annual rate of growth in rents across the country has jumped the highest than at anytime since 1988, which was during the last great Boom.

BIS Shrapnel senior economist  Jason Anderson  was reported in the Australian newspaper in late January 2009 as saying  the rental market was only going to get worse for teenants. 

He said the roots of the rental crisis before the economic downturn were the significant increase in immigration and high interest rates that left a shortage of about 100,000 houses.

But falling interest rates are not expected to help tenants as construction of much-needed properties had decreased because of tightening credit for property developers and builders.  "This means the shortages are going to get worse over the next two years," Mr Anderson said.

The figures come as the rental occupancy  rate increased in Melbourne to 98.8% per cent last year.