Four years of Melbourne rent, or four years of owning where they live.
If your child will study in Australia, the rent is going to be spent either way. The question is whether you hold anything at the end of it.
A Melbourne CBD one-bedroom near RMIT or the University of Melbourne runs roughly A$480–A$550 a week. Over a three or four year degree that is somewhere north of A$90,000 in rent, which buys you nothing and leaves your child at the mercy of a tight rental market each year.
The alternative is to buy before enrolment rather than during it. Your child lives in it, you avoid the annual scramble for a lease, and the asset stays with you long after they graduate — at which point it becomes an ordinary rental in a city with persistent undersupply.
Two constraints matter. Foreign buyers cannot purchase established dwellings until 30 June 2029, so this means new-build or off-the-plan, bought direct from a developer. And off-the-plan takes time to complete — which is exactly why this decision belongs two or three years before enrolment, not two months.
These articles cover the numbers, the timing, and which suburbs actually work for a student.
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