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  3. Who is moving, and who is staying put

Who is moving, and who is staying put

New bonds lodged against bonds held is a turnover rate: how often a tenancy in an area changes hands. New South Wales is the only state that publishes both halves. Covers New South Wales.

Who is moving, and who is staying put

New South Wales — it is the only state that publishes both bonds lodged and bonds held, and the accounting needs both.

Beside every rent figure NSW publishes two counts: bonds lodged during the quarter, and bonds held at the end of it. One is a flow and the other a stock, so together they close an accounting identity nobody publishes — every bond that existed and no longer does was closed. That is how many tenancies ended.

Across 313 NSW postcodes holding 846,943 bonds, 34.0% of the rental pool turned over in the year to June quarter 2026, down from 36.1% a year earlier. Fewer people are moving — which tightens the market for anyone who needs to.

34.0%
annual turnover to June quarter 2026
274,391
tenancies ended in the year
286,260
new tenancies begun
7.75%
latest quarter, vs 8.17% in June quarter 2025
36%38%40%
Dec 2018Jun 2026

At the current rate an average tenancy would run about 2.9 years — but that is a conditional, not a measurement. It assumes turnover stays where it is, and the whole point of the chart is that it has not: it holds only if today’s churn persists.

Bonds lodged and bonds held, published by NSW DCJ. Tenancies ended is lodgements minus the change in the pool — arithmetic on two published counts, not a model. Computed on a fixed panel of 313 postcodes reporting both counts in every quarter, covering 95.5% of the published pool; areas are never imputed. The series starts at March quarter 2018 because DCJ restated the bonds-held column between September quarter 2017 and December quarter 2017 — a -7.4% step that moved 99% of postcodes together — so no change is calculated across it. Counts bonds, not tenancies: a bond transferred between tenants moves nobody on paper, so this is a floor.