PRESS RELEASE: Australia’s rental crisis is hurting more than wallets . New research reveals the emotional toll on renters and investors alike

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Melbourne, Victoria | 28 January 2026
New research into Australia’s housing system has uncovered a rarely acknowledged cost of the rental crisis: the shared emotional and psychological strain experienced by both renters and residential property investors.
Commissioned by EqiHome Way in late 2025, the study bypassed traditional statistical modelling in favour of Zero-Party Data to capture unfiltered, anonymous sentiment directly from the people living inside the system. Rather than relying on assumptions or inferred behaviour, participants were asked to explicitly rank their frustrations and describe what would give them confidence to commit to long-term rental arrangements.
The result is a raw portrait of a system marked by uncertainty on all sides.
“It’s the guilt. You want to grow wealth, but it’s hard not to feel like part of the problem when rents rise. There’s a moral tension between being financially smart and socially conscious. People online love to paint investors as villains.”
— SNAP POLL, October 2025
“You can’t plan life when your home can be gone in an email.”
— SNAP POLL, October 2025
A convergence of crisis
Visualised through a series of sentiment bar charts, the findings reveal what the research describes as a convergence of crisis, where renters and investors are both constrained by the same underlying problem of systemic instability.
When asked to share “what nobody is talking about,” respondents consistently pointed beyond rent levels or yields to deeper impacts on wellbeing and long-term security:
• The anxiety of the next move
Renters described a constant state of hyper-vigilance, unable to plan family life, schooling or community connections.
• The stress of the unknown asset
Investors expressed concern about the lack of standardised, long-term frameworks that protect retirement outcomes while still providing genuine homes for others.
• The shared priority
When forced to rank trade-offs, both groups placed systemic certainty above financial flexibility.
“We didn’t want percentages, we wanted the truth,” said Andrew Walton, Founder of EqiHome Way.

“Traditional surveys assume what matters. Zero-Party Data lets people tell you directly what hurts. What we found is that the so-called tenant-investor war is a distraction from a deeper truth, that both sides want long-term stability and the current system simply doesn’t deliver it.”
Rethinking housing for 2026
The research suggests that progress in Australia’s housing market will not come from managing conflict between renters and investors, but from building new frameworks that recognise their shared need for certainty, continuity and dignity.
The full sentiment report, including raw data visualisations, is available for media review.
More Information: eqihomeway.org
ENDS

About EqiHome Way
EqiHome Way is a practical, pragmatic housing model designed to create equitable home arrangements between long-horizon residential investors seeking sustainable growth and renters seeking secure, long-term home certainty and wellbeing.

Media Contact:
Andrew Walton
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
📧 [email protected]
📞 0408 308 470