How a measure is made · The rent check

The ABS rents index, and the median of new bonds

The rent check uses the ABS rents index for each capital city; the area pages use medians of new bonds. They answer different questions. This page says what each follows, what the rent check calculates from each, and why the two can move apart.

Used on the rent check, and on the ABS pages for the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory and Tasmania.

Two measures, side by side

	The ABS rents index	The median of new bonds
What it follows	What tenants pay across new and continuing leases	The weekly rent of homes newly let in the period
Its unit	An index: its change means something, its level alone does not. Not a dollar rent.	Dollars a week
Where	Each of the eight capital cities as a whole	A postcode, suburb, suburb group, locality, council or region, by state; in New Zealand, a council or region
How often	Monthly, from July 2022	A quarter (Victoria: the 12 months to it; Tasmania and New Zealand: a month)
Whose figure	The publisher's own (ABS): the index values. The rent check's change over your period is the ratio of two of them, with nothing added, and the rent check's table of evidence credits it to the ABS.	By state: see The median of new bonds

What the rent check calculates

The rent check works out each of these from the publisher's figures. Its table of evidence credits the figures it lists this way: the index change to the ABS; the index-tracked rent to DwellDelta, marked worked out; and, for an NSW postcode, DCJ's median and quartiles to DCJ.

From the index: its change from the month your current rent began (the last rise, or the lease start if there has been none) to the newest month, as (the newest index ÷ the index in that month − 1) × 100. A rent that began before July 2022 is measured from July 2022, and the answer says so.
If your rent had tracked that index: your rent × (1 + that change). It is arithmetic on the index, not a rent anyone has set.
A proposed rent: its change on your rent, and how far it is, in dollars and in percentage points, from the index-tracked figure. Under a dollar apart, the answer says it is in line with the index.
When the city chosen is Sydney and you give an NSW postcode, it also places your rent, the index-tracked figure and any proposed rent among DCJ's quartiles of new bonds for the kind of home you choose, in words such as 'below the median and above the first quartile'. Where DCJ marks the figure a small sample, it places them with a caution. Where DCJ's tables give no figure for that kind of home in that postcode, it places nothing; it may offer a wider group, and uses one only if you choose it.
The table of capital cities on the rent check: each city's change over the year to the newest month, shown only when every city's series reaches the same newest month and holds the month a year before it.

Why the two can move apart

They follow different leases. The index follows what tenants pay across new and continuing leases. A median of new bonds follows only the homes newly let in the period, so it moves with the mix of homes let.
They cover different places and periods: the index, a whole capital city each month; a median of new bonds, one area within a state or New Zealand, for a quarter (Victoria: the 12 months to a quarter; Tasmania and New Zealand: one month).
To compare a rent with what new tenants nearby were paying, read the area's median. To compare it with how rents across a capital city's new and continuing leases moved, read the index.
So a rent can sit above its area's median and in line with the index, or the other way round. Neither figure says what a rent should be.

Straight about the data

What this cannot tell you

This compares against a city-wide index of what tenants pay across new and continuing leases. It is not the rent for your suburb or your street, and it is not an advertised rent.
Whether a rent is reasonable also depends on the property, its condition and the local market, and this cannot see any of that.
It is information, not advice, and it says nothing about what a tenancy tribunal would decide.

Where this is in DwellDelta's code

rent/rent-check.mjs: assess(), indexChangePct(), sentences() and LIMITS;
rent/local.mjs: find(), choose(), position(), evidence() and LOCAL_CITY;
mcp/place-tool.mjs: rentCheckLocal();
tools/render-rent-figures.mjs: yearChanges();
the file rent/data/rents-index.json (measures, and each city's first);
this page: methodPages(), tools/method-words.mjs, and tests/method-pages.test.mjs.