Between the December quarter of 2025 and 2026, median advertised rents nationally increased from $620 to $650, just shy of 5 per cent growth. That was enough to offset income growth and see affordability deteriorate further.<\/p>\n
Years of rapid rent growth mean advertised rents nationally have surged since the covid pandemic, from $420 at the start of 2020 to $650 in 2026 \u2013 an increase of 55 per cent.<\/p>\n
But for Italian expat Matilde, the rental battle in Australia was nothing compared to her struggle to make meaningful friendships.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Italian expat Matilde says making friends in Australia has been incredibly tough. Picture: Supplied<\/p>\n
Matilde has also lived in Switzerland, the UK and Canada but said Australia was the \u201cworst place\u201d to make friends and build a fulfilling life.<\/p>\n
She said people in Australia were polite and easy to talk to but most Aussies felt they had enough friends and weren\u2019t looking for more.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia has been the hardest country to make friends in,\u201d she said in a video.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe perception I had of Australians was that they were very extroverted, friendly, and eager to make new friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want their friends from school. They want their inner circle. They want to be friends with who they know.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re really good at small talk and it\u2019s something I absolutely cannot do. I don\u2019t want to talk about the weather. I don\u2019t want to talk about what I did over the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to talk about who you are. I want to talk about where you\u2019re from and your experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
While some viewers questioned how Matilde was meant to form meaningful friendships without first having the small talk, others agreed and shared their own experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born here in Australia and completely agree. It\u2019s very cliquey and it doesn\u2019t matter which state. I have zero friends and I\u2019m in my mid-50s,\u201d one woman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Italian expat living in Australia says skyrocketing rental prices and difficulty finding a home isn\u2019t the worst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-754339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}