Sydney's housing vacancy rate remains unchanged at 1.2 per cent
One in three real estate agents have been threatened or abused by people frustrated at Sydney's rental shortage, a survey has found.
The survey by the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales has found 32 per cent of agents have been threatened or abused within the last month.
The institute's president, Steve Martin, says the police have been called into real estate offices in some instances.
"We've had threats to property managers that in the event of their application not being approved, physical violence would take place," he said.
"We've had the other extreme where people have threatened suicide if their application isn't approved, which is very, very concerning.
"It's pent up frustration from tenants where they have been continually applying for premises and unfortunately, their applications just haven't been approved.
"Now, that's not necessarily their fault. The properties simply aren't available."
Sydney's housing vacancy rate for August remained unchanged from July at 1.2 per cent.
Premier Nathan Rees will meet the Real Estate Institute for crisis talks today.
Welfare groups call for $7.5b housing plan
Welfare groups will today ask the Federal Government to build an extra 30,000 public housing dwellings over the next four years.
The organisations say their plan would cost $7.5 billion.
Gregor McPhee from the Australian Council for Social Service, says the boost is needed to cope with rising demand.
"We know that COAG is meeting early next month to talk about a new national affordable housing agreement and the Commonwealth and the States will be working together on that," he said.
"We see it as an historic opportunity to invest in public housing and as part of that an investment in public and community housing."
Australian bankruptcies up 3pc
New statistics show the number of Australians declaring bankruptcy rose by 3 per cent last financial year.
The Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia says there were almost 26,000 bankruptcies in the 2007/2008 financial year.
The agency's acting inspector-general, David Bergman, says he expects the figure will continue to rise.
"Generally in the country is that we've continued to like debt and obviously there are some pressures out there on people at the moment, we're certainly not expecting to see any decline," he said.
"We probably would expect over the next few years we'll see a similar rate of bankruptcies to what we've had in the last couple of years."
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Fee too much for Block project
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