Rental property investment in disadvantaged areas: the means and motivations of Western Sydney’s new landlords

Abstract

For more than two decades, Australia’s private rental sector (PRS) has seen rapid growth, as latterly replicated in most other anglophone nations. Commentary and scholarly attention have generally focused on the population occupying this growing sector – so-called ‘generation rent’. The corollary, ‘generation landlord’, has meanwhile remained largely obscure. This article argues that the emerging literature on the ‘financialization of housing’ offers insights into the ongoing rise of investor landlords. Our analysis also contributes to the picture of financialized rental property investment; here drawing on a survey of investor landlords and their properties in an Australian PRS growth centre: disadvantaged suburbs in western Sydney. Most investors lived elsewhere; the attractions of western Sydney property acquisition being the expectation of unusually large capital gains, the prospect of amassing multiple properties and the local scope for intensified asset utilization. Referencing existing research evidence, this suggests that, even by comparison with the 2000s, a more professional, financialized investor mindset is emerging.