Ziggy Tow and his housemates thought they had had enough trouble after their property manager evicted them without grounds and listed their inner-Sydney home for an extra $300 a week.
Then the property manager claimed back all of the $3,400 they paid in bond to cover cleaning and repair fees.
It took three months of disputes before New South Wales’ rent tribunal ruled the claim was nearly triple a justified amount, awarding $2,100 to the housemates, who Tow said live “paycheck to paycheck”.
“I spoke to a lot of people who [said] ‘I would have just left it’,” Tow said.
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“They’re just getting every little cent they can from us, so they can make the house look nice [and rent] it to people who are going to pay more money for a house that we were happily living in.”
A growing number of tenants are losing some or all of their bond after their leases expire in Australia’s biggest housing markets, as surging rents and other living costs pressure households, analysis of public data has found.
Bonds are typically charged at a maximum of four weeks’ rent and have risen as the market tightened, after rent prices soared nearly a quarter higher since 2022, according to the Australia Bureau of Statistics.
Moving home has become even more expensive for renters, many of whom are forced to move each year.
Just over 42,000 households lost their entire bond in New South Wales in 2022. That figure rose to nearly 46,000 bonds claimed completely by the landlord in the year to June.
Full refunds have become less common, with the share slipping from 63% to 61% of bonds returned entirely to tenants.
In Victoria, the share of bonds fully refunded fell from 68% in mid-2021 to 64% in mid-2024, while in the Australian Capital Territory full refunds fell from nearly 77% in mid-2022 to 73% by mid-2025.
Landlords’ bond claims at move-out time have become the second most common reason for renters to contact advocacy group Tenants Victoria, according to its deputy chief executive, Cameron Bloye.
“It’s just an incredibly stressful time for renters, and [it] feeds into that power imbalance,” he said.
Rent rises and rip-offs
Experts say the power gap between tenants and landlords has not been the only reason for the rise in bond loss in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, with Australia’s rising rent prices playing a role.
Renters unable to pay off their final weeks of rent have grown more likely to ask landlords to take the money out of the deposit, Bloye said.
“We’ve got the most expensive rental market in living memory, and so we’re seeing more and more renters fall behind on rent, [which] perhaps explains the rising claims against renters’ bonds,” he said.
NSW data indicates long-term tenants who have leased a home for three or more years are facing particularly significant pressure: just 11,000 long-term bonds were fully withheld from tenants in 2021 but that rose to over 15,000 in the year to June.
“We might be seeing longer, more stable tenancies that have got past the first year or two coming to an end because [rent] increases have got out of hand,” said Leo Patterson Ross, the chief executive of the state’s tenants union.
However, the tenants most vulnerable to exploitation have also faced particular pressure, which Patterson Ross said signalled landlords’ greater power as rent becomes less affordable.
Bond loss has been highest in western Sydney, where tenants have been more likely to tell the union they do not understand their legal rights and fear being blacklisted on rental data bases. Outer-western suburbs Camden and Penrith have faced severe deterioration in bond loss, while Fairfield records double the average rate.
“People are discouraged from challenging, and even if [a claim] is completely off the wall, it’s rational to acquiesce because you’re trying to protect your future renting,” Patterson Ross said.
In Queensland, where bond claim reasons are reported, one in five claims are made over unpaid rent, but another fifth are made for cleaning and yet another fifth for repairs, according to the state’s residential tenancies authority (RTA).
However, bond payouts have surged in the sunshine state, with the share of full refunds rising from 50% to nearly 60% and the share of bonds lost completely falling from 20% to 15%, from mid-2018 to mid-2025.
Queensland’s tenants union points to renters’ increasing willingness to dispute bonds, as people like Tow take their landlords and agents to local tribunals and demand accountability.
Tenant-landlord disputes, most of which are bond-related, rose from fewer than 20,000 a year in mid-2020 to more than 23,000 in the year to June, RTA data showed. NSW data indicates disputes have fallen in 2025.
Making it easier for tenants around the country to dispute claims could be the answer, Patterson Ross said.
“[Landlords] should have to provide the evidence and apply to the tribunal, paying the fees and making that effort, rather than making the tenant do it … so only claims that are actually legitimate would make it to that level,” he said.
“We need to move a lot of the burden of enforcing the law away from tenants … These people aren’t coming together on equal footing.”
