Median weekly rent
The middle weekly rent paid by households renting their home, from the Census: half pay more and half pay less. It covers renting households in occupied private dwellings, private and public, on existing as well as new leases. At the 2021 Census, Australia's median weekly rent was $375.
What the Census measures
The Census asks each household how much it pays for its dwelling, and the tenure question decides whether the answer is recorded as rent or as a mortgage repayment. Households can answer weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and the ABS converts every answer to a weekly amount. The question asks households to leave out water rates, council rates, repairs, maintenance, body corporate and other fees, and to include site fees for caravans and manufactured homes in parks.
The scope is occupied private dwellings being rented, whoever the landlord is. The ABS's landlord types include real estate agents, state or territory housing authorities, community housing providers, private landlords who don't live in the household, owners of residential parks and employers, including Defence Housing Australia. From 2021, dwellings occupied rent-free are excluded from the rent figures, which they were not in 2016, and households that didn't state their rent (3.9% in 2021) are left out of the median rather than estimated.
Across Australia the median weekly rent in 2021 was $375, and 30.6% of occupied private dwellings were rented. By state, the median was $450 in the ACT, $420 in New South Wales, $370 in Victoria and $365 in Queensland.
Census rent and market rent
Census rent is what all renting households were paying in August 2021, including long-running leases, public and community housing and rentals from family or employers. Advertised rents, by contrast, measure the asking price for vacant properties, which the ABS notes are a small share of the market, with about 2 to 3% of occupied rentals changing tenant each month. Rents on new leases can rise faster, because they reset to the market when a tenant changes. In the ABS's new rental dataset for February 2023, 94.1% of new tenants paid more than the previous year's rent for the property, against 71% of existing tenants, and the gap between advertised rents and CPI rents was the largest since 2005.
A suburb's Census median can therefore sit well below advertised rents on listing sites, and further below where public housing makes up a large share of renters. The CPI rents series covers existing as well as new tenancies, including public housing, though only in the eight capital cities, which makes it a closer guide than advertised rents to how Census rents have moved since 2021. For a site decision, the Census median shows what renting households in an area actually pay and how that compares with other areas, and listings show what a new tenant would pay today.
How the median is worked out
The Census collects rent as an exact dollar amount, and has since 1996, though the ABS's standard tables publish it in ranges: $25 ranges from $75 to $549, $100 ranges from $550 to $949, and an open top range of $950 and over. A median for an area that the ABS doesn't publish, such as a group of suburbs or a drawn catchment, has to be estimated from those ranges by adding up the households in each range across the areas and finding the range where the middle household falls. Within a $25 range the estimate is close, and in the wider ranges above $550 it is less precise. Where more than half of renting households pay $950 or more, the median can only be stated as $950 or more.
Read alongside median household income, rent shows whether housing takes a larger share of income than elsewhere, and the share of renters paying more than 30% of income is covered under housing stress.
Median rent and Censible
Censible calculates median weekly rent from the ABS's rent ranges, for standard areas and catchments alike, by adding up the renting households in each range and interpolating within the range where the middle household falls. Because the ABS works from exact rents and Censible from ranges, Censible's median runs a few dollars above the ABS's own: across areas where the ABS publishes a median, 95% were within $16 of it, and the average difference was about $6 above.
Rents for 2026 are moved forward from 2021 with the rents series in the CPI, which covers existing tenancies as the Census does but is measured in the eight capital cities, and they're labelled as projections wherever they appear.
Sources: ABS, Census Dictionary 2021, Rent (weekly) dollar values (RNTD) and Rent (weekly) ranges (RNTRD); ABS, 2021 Census QuickStats, Australia; ABS, New insights into the rental market (April 2023).
Median
The middle value when everything is put in order: half the values are above it and half below. Census figures for age, income, rent and mortgage repayments are published as medians because a few very large values would distort an average.
Housing stress
When a household spends more than 30% of its income on rent or mortgage repayments. A stricter definition, the 30/40 rule, only counts households in the bottom 40% of incomes, because higher earners can usually afford to spend more.
Median household income
The middle value of total household income in an area: half of households receive more and half receive less. At the 2021 Census, Australia's median household income was $1,746 a week before tax, or about $90,800 a year.
Household and family composition
The ABS's Census classifications of who lives together. Household composition sorts each occupied private dwelling as a family, lone person or group household. Family composition sorts each family as a couple with or without children, a one parent family or another family.
Questions people ask
At the 2021 Census, the median weekly rent paid by renting households in Australia was $375. It was highest in the ACT at $450 and $420 in New South Wales.
The Census records what every renting household was paying, including long-standing tenants and public and community housing. Advertised rents are asking prices for vacant properties, which the ABS shows rise faster than rents paid by existing tenants.
Yes. It covers all occupied private dwellings being rented, including those rented from state or territory housing authorities and community housing providers. Dwellings occupied rent-free are excluded from 2021.
No. The Census asks households to exclude water rates, council rates, repairs, maintenance, body corporate and other fees, though site fees for caravans and manufactured homes are included.
Only with care, because the ABS excluded rent-free dwellings from 2021 rent figures but included them in 2016, and rents have also risen with prices since then.