Fewer than one in 100 rental properties in Sydney are affordable for people on welfare or single people on the minimum wage, according to a snapshot of the rental market in Australia's least affordable city.

An annual survey by Anglicare, taken on a weekend in March, examined more than 17,000 rental property listings across the greater Sydney region and found just 41 were affordable for those on income support payments.

Only 157 properties, or less than 1 per cent, were deemed appropriate and affordable for single people on the minimum wage. For families with two parents earning the minimum wage, there were 2672 affordable properties - or 15 per cent of the total.

The vast majority of those properties were located in Parramatta or Blacktown, the south west, the Blue Mountains and the Central Coast, with only a handful of inner suburban properties deemed affordable.