High demand for rental properties in Wagga is leaving residents desperate to find a home as their applications continue to be denied despite a steady income.
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Disability worker Kylie Andrews has applied for at least 30 properties since early July and is yet to be successful.
Ms Andrews was originally looking for a three-bedroom home with a yard, but has since widened her search in an attempt to find somewhere she can bring her pet dog.
"On some of those applications I've offered to pay $10,000 rent in advance, $5000 rent in advance, sign leases of one or two years, and I just keep getting 'sorry, your application has been unsuccessful'," she said.
"It's very disheartening because you get excited, especially if you look through the property and you get your hopes up."
She said she was fortunate to be able to stay with her son and his partner while she continued the search, with many others in an even more difficult position.
Brad Sanders has been looking for a rental for himself and his 10-year-old daughter for about a month, and he said he had applied for over 50 homes without success.
"I probably go for at least seven to 12 rentals every week and it doesn't matter if its a two bedroom, three bedroom, four bedroom ... you just get told no within an hour of putting the application in," he said.
"You sort of get sick of doing them in the end."
A full-time cement truck driver, Mr Sanders said he had never had a problem finding a rental before in his 10 years at Wagga but was now unsure of his options with just weeks until he needed to move.
"I don't know what we're going to do," he said.
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Professionals Wagga managing director Paul Irvine said his office was seeing rental vacancy rates of about 0.4 to 0.5 per cent, and it was clear demand was outweighing supply in the Wagga rental market.
He said the coronavirus pandemic had reduced the amount of people vacating their properties in the usually transient Wagga market, and grants encouraging first-home-buyers meant most of the new builds in the northern suburbs were being snapped up by owner-occupiers rather than investors.
"At the moment no-one's moving, therefore nothing's available for people to move into," he said.
Mr Irvine said he had seen an increase in people willing to apply without inspecting the property on top of high inspection numbers.
"There'd be 20 to 30 minimum per property applying to inspect a property," he said.
Mr Irvine said his best advice for those applying for rentals was to get in early, with plenty of references and no missing details.
"Don't forget one thing that would cause the agency to have to ring you back, because the horse has probably bolted, it's probably leased by that time," he said.
He said while a real estate agency would occasionally accept the offer of a larger upfront rent payment, the long-term certainty of good references and a strong rental history would still often win out.
"Sometimes, in all honesty, we could have 10 of the most beautiful applications, but only one can have it," he said.
"It's not normally the applicant's fault, there's just 10 quality applicants for the property and it's at our landlord's discretion then."