Methodology and sources

Every figure on Cost Atlas comes from public government data. This page explains where it comes from and how we calculate it.

Rent on new leases

Source: NSW Fair Trading rental bond data, published monthly by NSW Fair Trading under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. Each record is one new lease, with the lodgement date, postcode, dwelling type, number of bedrooms and weekly rent written on the lease.

• We use flats/units, houses and terraces/townhouses, and drop weekly rents below $150 or above $5,000.
• All figures are medians.
• To compare years fairly, we compare the same months each year (currently January–September).
• A postcode gets its own page when it has at least 50 new leases in January–September 2026. A home type is shown with at least 10 leases, and a five-year change needs at least 100 leases in both years.

These are rents on new leases, not what all existing tenants pay. New-lease rents react faster to the market.

Greater Sydney and regions

Greater Sydney covers postcodes 2000–2249, 2555–2574 and 2740–2786 that fall in an ABS "Sydney" Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) region. Regions on this site are those 14 SA4s. A postcode that crosses a boundary is placed in the region most of its localities belong to.

Rent burden

Rent burden = median new-lease rent × 52 ÷ the average salary and wage of residents in that postcode. Wages come from ATO Taxation Statistics 2023–24 (Individuals, Table 6), indexed to 2026 with the ABS Wage Price Index for NSW (×1.064). This is the average of all residents, not only renters, and averages are pulled up by high earners, so the burden for renters is likely understated in wealthier areas. Two-income households pay roughly half the share shown.

Bonds and tenancy length

Source: NSW Fair Trading rental bond refund data. For each refunded bond we see how much went to the tenant and how much to the landlord or agent, and how many days the bond was held. "Full bond returned" means the tenant received the whole bond. Days held is a proxy for tenancy length and is less accurate when bonds are transferred. Bond outcomes are shown with at least 50 refunds.

Wages

Sydney-wide wage growth uses the ABS Wage Price Index, NSW, total hourly rates of pay excluding bonuses, annual change to each June quarter.

Limitations

• In 2021 border closures pushed down rents in the inner city and around universities, so five-year rises there are overstated.
• Postcode medians mix home types; a wave of new apartments can move a postcode's median.
• Postcode-to-suburb names come from a public postcode lookup and list the localities that share each postcode.
• Bond data published online starts in 2021. We have asked NSW Fair Trading for earlier years.

Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.