“We’ll see more people fall into rental stress. It does make lower-income households extremely vulnerable.”

KPMG demographer and urban economist Terry Rawnsley also said skyrocketing regional rents were a hangover of the pandemic.

He said tenants with city incomes have pushed up rents rapidly and have snapped up the historically low levels of rental supply in the regions.

He said it has created challenging conditions for local communities.

“The ag [agricultural] sector can’t find accommodation for the workers to fill the jobs. You’ve probably heard about the local restaurant and café is closed for three nights a week because they can’t find staff to man those shifts,” he said.

Rawnsley said while priced-out workers in a major city would typically move to the next suburb to rent, regional workers have to move to the next town, which can often be hours away.

He said the rental crisis is no longer about affordability, but availability, as locals are displaced from their communities and face homelessness in some cases.

“It’s creating social dislocation and the knock-on effects of insecure housing and homelessness, which a lot of regional communities haven’t seen in generations to this extent,” he said.

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“There is simply no available house, it’s not just housing affordability, it’s a housing availability issue.”

Belle Property Hunter Valley business development manager Bronlyn Davis, who covers the Cessnock region, said the rental market was so tight that prospective tenants were applying for rentals before inspecting a property.

“When we send a property live, we start to get applications within 15 minutes. That means we haven’t even advertised an open home, and we get the applications flowing within 15 minutes,” Davis said.

She said while they try to maintain advertising market rents, applicants continue to offer more to secure a rental.

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“We have a lot of people looking…we’ve got people who have been on our lists for six months now,” Davis said.

“Some are now homeless or living with friends because they haven’t been able to find anything because of the demand from the rental market. It’s such a tough market at the moment.”

In Lismore, medians rents jumped 19.6 per cent — or $90 — to $550 a week.

Ray White Lismore property manager Sam Cheli said the recent floods compounded the already limited number of rentals available due to the region’s popularity during COVID.

“The rental increase was well up before this, but the flood was massive for Lismore, in terms of availability but also the demand,” Cheli said.

“We had a lot of people fleeing from Sydney and Melbourne. That’s what sparked it. We had a lot of demand and not a lot of stock to keep up with that demand and as result prices went through the roof.”

He said their office alone lost 70 rentals overnight in the major flooding event with many of those yet to return to the market.

“They either have to move out of town or pay ridiculous prices for something a lot similar,” Cheli said.

McGrath Upper Hunter managing principal Michael Burke said rental demand in his region was largely driven by coal mining and the thoroughbred industry – the region’s two main sectors.

He said despite investors buying more properties in recent years, supply has fallen well short of demand.

“A lack of development in the Scone township, which is one of the biggest rental markets in the Upper Hunter, is partly responsible for those shortages,” Burke said.

“There are certainly people within our community who are finding it much harder to make ends meet to not only to keep up with their accommodation to keep with up with generalised economic inflation like fuel, food and all other living expenses.”