Talitha Porter wasn't looking for anything special: a pet-friendly, two or three-bedroom house near the Palmerston suburb of Moulden where she'd been a tenant for three years.

But when she set out in the Top End rental market to find a new home before her lease ends — and the home-owner can sell — on March 11, the 23-year-old soon began to question her chances.

Dozens of people were crowding into inspections for ordinary homes. Asking prices exceeded her upper budget of $400 per week, in some cases by as much as one third.

And application after application — up to 20 of them, she said — for the houses that were within her price range were routinely knocked back.

With two large pet dogs and a third child on the way, Ms Porter got the impression her applications were falling to the bottom of the pile.

"There are a lot of people out there that have a lot more rental experience than I do, as well as having multiple other places that they've rented prior, and I've only had this one house for the past three years," she said.

"It was a bit stressful, to the point that I'd end up staying up after my kids were put in bed and crying, because I didn't know if I'd end up getting a place for my kids."

Ms Porter had unknowingly found herself at the coalface of a predicament unfolding outside of Australia's major cities, where housing supply has been outgrown by demand.

"Twelve months ago, you would be standing at the front of a property on a Saturday for no-one to attend," said Jess Lee from Habitat Real Estate, a Darwin-based property management agency.

"Now we're holding opens and you're getting unprecedented numbers in the 20s and 30s.

"We had one unit in the city, a couple of weeks ago, that had 60 people registered to see the property."

Regional migration a 'double-edged sword'

Real estate professionals have linked the upheaval to an exodus from Australia's major cities — a theory backed up by recent ABS data.

The same dataset showed a net gain from interstate migration in Darwin for the first time in nearly six years. Meanwhile, some property market research shows vacancy rates in Darwin have dropped from 3.5 per cent to less than 1 per cent in the year to December 2020.

Adrian Kelly from the Real Estate Institute of Australia said the pandemic — and in particular the ability to work from home and desire to avoid lockdowns — had catalysed a shift to the regions, and said he believed the trend was here to stay.

"It'll be unstoppable, because now with people working from home, having a family home with office space is going to be much more popular than living in a one or two-bedroom apartment in Melbourne or Sydney," he said.

"It's hard for the locals because they're used to rents being at a certain level, and now all of sudden they're being pushed upwards."

He listed Hobart, Wollongong and Byron Bay as areas where similar booms were taking place, and they have been reported in places including Cairns, the Gold Coast, and Mount Gambier.

No-grounds eviction notices on the rise

The same market forces have pushed some tenants — many of them who have never faced homelessness before — to the brink of crisis.

Maree*, a tenant who spoke anonymously out of fear of reprisal, said rent on her unit was put up by $100 a week when it was time to renew her lease.

She said the increase would see close to half of her take-home income swallowed up by rent.

"I know that because I'm a single, older woman with a dog, it's hard to find places to rent at the best of times that are affordable and will allow you to have a dog," she said.

"My other plan is to sell my car and buy a larger one because I might need somewhere to sleep — that's how worried I am at the moment."

Cases of tenants receiving no-grounds eviction notices at the end of their leases, so properties can either be sold or advertised at higher rent, have increased significantly, according to the Darwin Community Legal Service (DCLS).

The ABC has spoken to numerous tenants in this situation.

Some felt compelled to offer more than the asking rental price so they could secure new housing, while others have been forced to downsize or consider moving interstate.

"Because of the pressure on the rental market and the competitive nature of the market at the moment, those tenants — long-term Territorians — are struggling to find long-term accommodation," said Caroline Deane, who manages the DCLS Tenants' Advice Service.

"It's low income-earners who are the ones who will have particular difficulty finding an alternative property, but it is happening across the board, to all demographics."

COVID-19 protections rarely used

The REIA has called for more housing to be built in regional areas to meet the heightened demand, but Mr Kelly acknowledges a housing shortfall is "not an easy problem to fix overnight".

Meanwhile, Ms Deane is calling on the Northern Territory Government to legislate short-term stronger tenancy laws than the ones it passed as part of its coronavirus response last April.

The legislative changes beefed up several protections for tenants, including extending no-grounds eviction notice periods to 60 days, but Ms Deane said the government did not legislate key policies like moratoriums on evictions and rent increases.

"Those protections were rarely utilised and were largely ineffective because we still had those no-grounds terminations notices," she said.

"At the moment, tenants in the Northern Territory are struggling to find an alternative property within 60 days, so our concern is if that period is shortened [as per the standard tenancy legislation], tenants will not be able to find alternative properties and it may increase our homeless population."

A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Selena Uibo said the COVID-19 tenancy legislation would remain in place as long as a public health emergency declaration was in effect.

She did not directly respond to a question about whether they should be reviewed amid the market upheaval.

"What we need is for the Northern Territory Government to implement some permanent changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to support Territorians to stay in their homes for longer," Ms Deane said.

"Many other states have legislation that prohibits no-grounds terminations, and that would be something that would benefit Northern Territory tenants and should be implemented here."

*Not her real name.