Sydneysiders are riding out the rental crisis by staying put. New figures from the Department of Housing show a significant drop in the number of bonds being lodged with the Rental Bond Board. The median weekly rental price on new leases in Sydney increased by $30 in the past year. Vacancy rates fell last month to an all-time low of 0.9 per cent. The lodgment of new bonds has slumped 6.5 per cent in a year. "It's really measuring people trying to weather the rent crisis by sitting tight and not moving," said the policy officer at the Tenants Union of NSW, Chris Martin. The fall in bond lodgments is part of a trend that began about four years ago. In 2003 almost 204,000 new bonds were lodged, but in the past year about 183,000 were lodged. The biggest slides have occurred in the city's inner ring, which includes local government areas such as Woollahra, Waverley, Leichhardt and Ashfield, where bond lodgments have dropped almost 15 per cent since 2003. Coupled with the continuing decline in bond lodgments is an increase in the average length of tenancies. The number of NSW tenancies lasting longer than 12 months grew from 49 per cent to 56 per cent between 1999-2000 and 2005-06. Tenancies of longer than two years climbed four percentage points in the same period. An economist at BIS Shrapnel, Jason Anderson, said renters were increasingly loath to give up their properties, even in situations where their landlord wanted to increase the rent. BIS Shrapnel predicts vacancy rates will stay below 1 per cent and median house rental prices will increase 10 per cent a year in Sydney for the next two years. The chairman of the National Affordable Housing Summit, Julian Disney, said factors contributing to the drop in bond lodgments included young people leaving home later in life, a decrease in the number of people leaving the rental market to buy their own homes and a growth in the number of group houses. Source From SMH