The Rent Tracker Postcode Tool and Rent Increase Negotiation Kit are part of the Tenants' Union Rent Tracker Research Project. This project uses data published by NSW Fair Trading, and aims to give tenants, researchers, journalists, and others a clear way to understand rent movements in NSW. 

NSW Fair Trading data

NSW Fair Trading provides the data for recent rental bond lodgements and refunds as well as data on the total rental bond holdings. The data published by Fair Trading includes data provided by the agent or landlord at the time of lodgement. See the Fair Trading data at fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/about-fair-trading/rental-bond-data

The Tenants' Union does not 'clean' or change the Fair Trading data in any way. We make updates monthly or as often as the data is made available from Fair Trading. 

Notes on bonds

There may be some bonds lodged which have not had rents accurately described, or have a null value in one or more fields. This will not cause significant statistical issues in areas with large numbers of bonds being lodged, but may in areas with small numbers of bonds. 

For the initial median rent value we have grouped the most recent 3 months worth of lodged bonds. This is more than is necessary for more densely populated areas, but allows less densely populated areas can generally still allow meaningful analysis. Users can adjust parameters of dates to receive. The rent over time chart always shows values by month.

Bonds that are reported without a rent value have not been included in analysis of rents, but are included in the count of all bonds lodged in an area.

Notes on areas

The bond data is published with postcodes identified. For our regions measure we started by grouping postcodes to broadly align with ABS SA4 areas. Comparisons to SA4 should be done with caution. For Sydney, the SA4 regions are further reduced to give useful indications of populations as per the map below.