How The Renting Hunger Games Ends

Will Australia's rental crisis ever end, or are we doomed to live in overpriced dogboxes forever?

‘Just move to the regions bro.’

I’m sure you’ve heard it.

We all have.

Move to the regions.

Just move there and buy a landbox (reverse dogbox).

Don’t bother renting in Sydney or Melbourne.

Too expensive.

The magical regions will solve all your problems.

If everyone just moved to the regions, we wouldn’t have a renting crisis.

Right?

Right, guys?

No.

Because not everyone can move to the regions.

They are called regions for a reason…

No one lives there.

They are regional towns.

If someone tells you the solution to the rental crisis plaguing Australia is to ‘move to the regions’ you can automatically discount their opinion on pretty much everything.

Because moving to the regions is very unlikely to solve their problems.

What job are they going to do there?

Are they happy moving away from their friends and family?

Do they want to commit to still spending close to a million dollars these days in the regions just for a landbox?

Is that really living?

I mean, sure, for some people moving to the regions might be a good idea.

It could be a viable option for people who work from home 24/7 and want to implement ‘geoarbitrage’: earning as much money as possible by working remotely and then moving somewhere as cheap as possible.

But is it really a long-term solution to solve the rental crisis?

No.

Because at a macro level all you’re doing by encouraging people to ‘move to the regions’ is shifting demand from one place to another.

Want to know the real reason we have a rental crisis?

It’s obvious, isn’t it?