Australia’s Carrie Bradshaw Index: Why you need to rent in city’s most expensive suburbs to live alone

Living alone, sipping cocktails and staying relatively close to the action of the city that never sleeps.

The dream lifestyle of Carrie Bradshaw, the New York-loving protagonist of Sex and The City, has grown into such a delicate balancing act property-wise that it gave birth to The Economist’s Carrie Bradshaw Index, an in-depth analysis of where a metropolitan maiden could have it all — while renting a home on their own.

Now the SATC suburb and city ranking has an Australian version, developed by Ray White Group’s chief economist Nerida Consibee ... and the results and the strategy you need to live like Carrie might surprise you.

And while they’re not Manhattan, the Australian version found that for single Canberrans, Hacket, followed by Curtin and Barton emerged as the best suburbs to rent in if you wanted to go it alone and still afford the social lifestyle enjoyed by Sarah Jessica Parker’s iconic character.

Meanwhile, Kalinga in Brisbane, Kingsville in Melbourne and Hunter’s Hill in Sydney top the list of the most affordable suburbs in these cities for single dwellers.

To replicate The Economist analysis, Ms Conisbee used data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to compare average weekly incomes in each suburb with median unit rents.

If a person was spending 30 per cent or less of their income on rent, then the suburb was deemed affordable.

However, Ms Conisbee said the analysis found that the CBDs of many capital cities remained completely unaffordable for people who wanted to live alone.

Best cities

“Very few capital cities are affordable, with only the ACT, Darwin and Hobart with average incomes for a single person above that required to rent a unit,” she said.

“Very high levels of development in Canberra has made it a good place to rent on your own,” she said.

“In comparison, a lack of unit developments in Brisbane and Adelaide have made renting a unit far more expensive for a single person.

“As a result, people in these cities need to spend quite a bit more than they earn to rent on their own.”

However, when you drill down to the suburb level, even in the least affordable capital cities, there are still pockets that have decent opportunities for single renters.

Top suburbs

In Adelaide, for example, Dulwich, just three kilometres from the CBD was found to be affordable, with singles needing to spend 21.1 per cent of their weekly income on rent; and in Perth, the inner-city suburb of West Leederville offers the most affordable living options for single dwellers, with renters needing to spend 25.3 per cent of their income to lead the lifestyle of Bradshaw.

One surprising aspect of the analysis was that many of the most affordable suburbs for a single person tended to be located in relatively expensive areas, Ms Conisbee said.

“This is because incomes are very high in expensive areas but typically rents are relatively low in comparison, particularly in areas where there has been a lot of development,” she said.

“For example, Hunters Hill comes out as the most affordable for a single person to rent a unit in Sydney, primarily because incomes are very high in Hunters Hill but there are quite a lot of apartments so rents are relatively affordable.

“In this suburb, unit rents are relatively low at $600 per week but incomes are very high at $2,468 per week.

“Cottesloe (in Perth) is similar — people with very high incomes live there and, in comparison to these incomes, rents are quite affordable.”

Not an option

The most unaffordable suburbs to live in if you’re single is topped by Haymarket in Sydney, where you need to spend 79.5 per cent of your weekly income to rent alone; followed by Murdoch in Perth, where rents are 61.2 per cent of median weekly incomes; and Meadow Heights (60.5 per cent) in Melbourne’s outer north.

“The most unaffordable suburbs tend to be areas where incomes are comparatively low. Haymarket in inner Sydney has a lot of students and hence lower incomes. The ratio of rental payments for a unit relative to a single person’s income is high,” Ms Conisbee said.

Overall, she said renting on your own is definitely an affordable option if you earn a good income and even more so if you rent in an expensive suburb with a lot of apartments.

“This is consistent with the lifestyle of Carrie Bradshaw — likely earning quite a bit of money (columnist) and renting in an expensive city with a lot of apartments (New York). For Australia, the Carrie Bradshaw index holds true,” she concluded.