Median weekly asking rents rose $45 (or 5.6 per cent) over the March quarter – which is almost $100 more than the average Sydneysider pays and $225 more than Brisbanites.
Mermaid Beach’s median house rent is $1200 a week.Coastal
The figures,released in Domain’s latest Rent Report,showed house rents also reached a record high $750 a week on the Sunshine Coast after a whopping 7.1 per cent quarterly hike ($50).
Unit rent medians in both cities also swelled to record highs of $725 (Gold Coast) and $640 (Sunshine Coast) with experts saying they collectively bucked a nationwide trend of slowing rental price hikes.
In comparison,median weekly rents in greater Brisbane and $590 for units.
The report showed 18 suburbs across south-east Queensland now ask an average rent of $1000 or more,with 16 of those on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. A year ago,Queensland’s $1000+ rent club had just one member.
The Gold Coast’s premier blue-chip pocket Broadbeach Waters is the state’s most expensive place to rent a house at $1350 per week – up 12.5 per cent in a year and 80 per cent in five years.
Domain’s chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said both cities clocked a reacceleration of rental growth in the first three months of the year which showed appetite for the coastal lifestyle hasn’t waned.
“It’s a clean sweep of record highs for the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast,” she said.
“Rental growth for both house and units over the March quarter doubled … and while overall growth is lower than the peaks achieved in 2022,we still have strong levels of overseas and interstate migration in both cities.
“If you’re commanding over $1000 a week for rent it showcases the premium nature of suburbs there and that Australians really do pay that premium for a lifestyle.”
Even so,Powell said rental vacancy rates across the two coastal hubs clawed their way back up to 0.8 per cent compared to an ultra-low 0.3 per cent in 2022.
“To get back up to 0.8 is a vast difference and it shows the situation has improved from the depths of extreme competition. But we can’t ignore the fact that it does remain a landlord’s market.
“I do think we’re moving away from the extreme rates of rental growth we’ve seen on the Gold Coast and that can be explained by the rental vacancy rate doubling.”
On the Sunshine Coast,however,Powell believed the city was again in the midst of another upward cycle.
“It had a wobble in asking rents in 2023 but for some reason houses have seen a 7.1 per cent increase in three months and that’s strong. That’s mimicking the 2021 and 2022 booms we saw and back then,the Sunshine Coast rose before the Gold Coast did,” she said.
“We’d see prices increase on the Sunshine Coast before rippling out. And for the past two quarters rent prices have accelerated.”
The Gold Coast’s Kollosche real estate agency’s new client manager Mark Thomas said while the start of the year had been a bumper quarter for the sun-drenched city,at the very premium end of the market rent prices were falling.
“A home that previously fetched $3000 per week is renting for $2500,” Thomas said. “But once you get below $1500 or $2000 a week for rent,we still have a lot of people waiting.”
In Broadbeach Waters he said rent hikes were helped by mass interstate demand. Thomas said its prime location in the heart of the Gold Coast,the concentration of waterfront homes on the maze of canals and its easy access to the Convention Centre and casino made it perennially attractive.
Thomas said Kollosche recently leased out the Gold Coast’s most expensive rental there for an eyewatering $7500.
Bundall,Clear Island Waters and Mermaid Beach – all on the Gold Coast – were the second most expensive Queensland suburbs to rent a house at $1200 per week.
On the Sunshine Coast,Minyama topped the house rent list at $1100 – up 30 per cent over the past year and 93 per cent in five years.
Stacey Cameron,of Century 21 On Duporth,said interstate migrants had played a star role in price hikes there,with particularly cashed up Melbourne tenants happy to fork out $1800 per week for rent,and some locals just as happy to splash the cash.
The rental manager recently leased a five-bedroom,four-bathroom house in Minyama for precisely that sum to a 27-year-old local influencer whom she said simply wanted a stunning waterfront home to film social media content.
“Minyama is small and tightly held and it’s the highest end area in this part of the Sunshine Coast,” Cameron said.
“When we were leasing properties here back in early 2020,you’d get $900 for the same house per week and just a handful of people enquiring.
“Now we have less than a one per cent vacancy and most homes are leasing before they are even vacant.”