• Summary
• Downloads
• Explanatory Notes
• Related Information
• Past Releases

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Median weekly rental payments

• In 2011, the median weekly household rent in Western Australia was $300, the second highest in the country and equal to median rents paid in New South Wales and Queensland. This compared with $285 for Australia.
• The Local Government Area (LGA) with the highest median weekly rent in Western Australia was Cottesloe ($450 per week), located on the coast, west of the inner region of Perth. This was considerably higher than the median weekly rent costs of Western Australia and Australia. The LGAs of Perth and Nedlands also reported median weekly rents above $400 in 2011, $440 and $429 respectively.
• As the following map shows, the highest median weekly rents were located in the Greater Perth region and surrounding areas. The lowest rents were reported in remote and very remote regions.

MEDIAN WEEKLY RENTAL PAYMENT(a), by Local Government Area, Western Australia, 2011


(a) Applicable to occupied private dwellings which were being rented (or occupied rent-free) by a member of the household. Excludes 'Visitor only' and 'Other non-classifiable' households.

• Between 2006 and 2011, eight out of the top ten fastest growing LGAs in median weekly rent payments in Australia were located in Western Australia. Ravensthorpe and Serpentine-Jarrahdale were the second and third fastest rental growth regions in Australia, behind Weipa in far north Queensland.
• The median rent costs in Ravensthorpe, a shire located in the southern Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, more than doubled in cost; $109 per week in 2006 to $220 in 2011.
• The LGA with the fastest growth in rent costs in Greater Perth was Serpentine-Jarrahdale, south east of Perth, which nearly doubled from $155 per week in 2006 to $309 in 2011, a rise of 99.4%. This LGA had the highest proportion of homes owned with a mortgage in Australia in 2011 (55.3%) and recorded one of the lowest proportions of rented dwellings (14.7%).