For 15 years, rental vacancy in Stawell has hovered near zero. As industry expands and ambition builds, the town faces a simple question: where are people meant to live?

Thomas Foods has expanded. Gold exploration is stirring. Locals are talking openly about new visitor drawcards — ideas like a Dark Matter Experience Centre — projects that signal a town thinking bigger about its future.

That is the hopeful story.

But there is a harder one running underneath it.

On local community noticeboards, rental requests now appear with weary regularity — families asking for anything available, workers posting that they will take whatever we can get”, landlords fielding private messages within minutes of a property going up.

The town can attract work faster than it can house workers.

Few people have had Stawell’s rental market in their hands longer than Terry Monaghan.

“Vacancy rates for 15 years have been close to zero,” Mr Monaghan said.

Close to zero — not recently, not occasionally — for 15 years.

That has been the base condition. Every new wave of demand lands as pressure. There is no slack to absorb it.

And it isn’t only rentals. The same shortage of stock constrains movement across sales.

“The shortage of properties on the market is an important factor to mention, because it really hasn’t been enough choice for buyers,” he said.

“So when something does come up, they generally grab it fairly quickly.

“If it’s overpriced, it might sit for a while, but anything buyers consider good value goes pretty quick.”

Investors are part of the mix — but not the whole story.

“Not the majority. I’d say it’s probably around 50/50, home buyers and investors,” he said.

“A lot of investors are a bit hesitant at the moment with government changes, so properties that are rental compliant are very attractive, because they don’t have to spend too much money on them.”

“A lot of investors are a bit hesitant at the moment with government changes, so properties that are rental compliant are very attractive, because they don’t have to spend too much money on them.”

The sharpest pressure is in the rental pool — particularly as Stawell draws more fixed-term workers.

“They’re not long-term residents, they’re here for 12 months or two years, and they’re not going to buy because the cost to buy and sell is too much,” he said.

“So they rent, and that certainly keeps the market pressure going.

“It doesn’t make it any easier for families that maybe can’t afford to buy a house immediately.

There’s a lot of pressure on rents.”

He is clear this is not new.

“There’s a shortage and there has been for a long time,” Mr Monaghan said.

“It’s not a recent thing, this is a long-term situation.”

This is where Stawell’s growth story meets its housing story.

The town wants industry. It wants stronger tourism. It wants to attract skilled professionals and keep them.

Housing sits at the centre of whether those ambitions are realistic.

“There is a demand in Stawell for quality family housing, there’s demand for rental housing, there’s demand for units,” Mr Monaghan said.

“There’s nothing really sitting on the market except maybe some higher-end stock, and even that tends to go eventually.”

When vacancy is near zero, demand does not create opportunity. It creates competition — at inspections, at applications, and inside households weighing whether they can afford to stay.

Employers feel it too.

“Thomas Foods would love to solve these problems, and that runs through to every other employer in the town, they’re all competing for staff,” he said.

“If you’ve got somebody moving to Stawell and you think they should be in something nice, well, that’s hard to get.”

What would change it? Scale.

“It won’t improve until we get another few hundred houses. At this rate, that would take a long time.”

Even then, the system does not suddenly free up.

“There’s got to be people moving from older houses into new houses, and then people buy the old houses and want them rented out,” he said.

“It’s really difficult to understand how it can be relieved, because it’s just not the stock.”

Developers would not struggle to find tenants.

“You would certainly find tenants, there’s no worries on that front.”

The obstacles are the arithmetic of building and the cost of holding rentals.

“With the cost of building today, it’s very hard to get the return you want on your investment,” he said.

“And the other problem is the government making rentals so expensive to own because of all the compliance — landlords and people looking to invest are holding back.”

If private rental supply retreats, the need does not vanish. It shifts.

“Where are people going to live? Are they going to have to be government housing, because mum and dad investors are pulling out?,” Mr Monaghan said, “The government’s got to build and maintain those houses, and we don’t have any money to do that.”

For Mr Monaghan, rentals are not basic policy settings. They are the foundation beneath workforce attraction and family stability.

“The tenant should look after his property, the landlord should look after his tenant,” he said.

“If people get that in their heads, we’re laughing. If they don’t, it’s never going to work. You’ve got to give back.”

Stawell’s ambitions are real. So is the constraint.

The town can expand industry and dream up new attractions — but growth has a ceiling when the people required to deliver it cannot find somewhere to live.

Stawell’s rental vacancy has been close to zero for 15 years.

A town cannot build its future on a number like that forever.