Frantic search for home is now a weekend ritual

Sydney

Forget that swim at the beach, round of golf or relaxing breakfast with the newspaper. For thousands of Sydneysiders, the most common Saturday morning ritual these days is scouring the suburbs for somewhere to live.

By the time the real estate agent arrives for the 15-minute viewing there's an expectant throng waiting outside the advertised property. The mood, however, is more funereal than festive as more people (immigrants and locals alike) compete for a dwindling number of rental properties.

With the city's inflated property prices sliding inexorably southwards, demand for houses and apartments to rent is spiralling out of control. A modest flat in an inner city suburb like Surry Hills or Potts Point can draw a crowd of more than 60 people.

So bad is Sydney's rental crisis (a report suggests the rental vacancy rate is just 3.6 per cent) that some would-be tenants have resorted to bribing agents - others have even threatened violence.

While experts are divided about the exact cause of Sydney's dire shortage of rental property - some blame record levels of immigration, others the basic lack of housing stock - you do not need to go far to witness the human toll.

'We're getting pretty desperate,' confesses a middle-aged man to an agent showing a flat in Elizabeth Bay. 'If we don't get somewhere by the end of the month we'll be homeless.'