Australia’s rental vacancy rate is at 0.8 per cent.Credit:Peter Rae
Vacancy rates are now well below the peak of 3.8 per cent recorded in 2020 at the height of the pandemic,when international borders were closed to stop the spread of COVID-19.
It has pushed Sydney rents higher – house rents soared by 4.8 per cent or $30 per week to a $650 median in the September quarter,Domain data showed.
It was a similar story inMelbourne,where house rents rose by 2.2 per cent in three months to a weekly median of $470.
At 1.1 per cent,Melbourne’s vacancy rate equalled a low first set in 2018 – well down on the highs of 5.2 per cent in 2020.
Brisbane’s vacancy rate was still tight,though it rose slightly to 0.7 per cent,while Perth’s rate fell to a record 0.3 per cent and Adelaide recorded the tightest rental market among the capital cities with 0.2 per cent.
Real Estate Institute of Australia president Hayden Groves said property managers were reporting that some prospective tenants were making up to 50 applications for a home.
Some were giving up as it had become too difficult to find a rental after so many applications.
“It is a very challenging time for tenants and the industry acknowledges that,” Groves said.
There are fewer rentals available in Sydney after many homes sold to owner-occupiers.Credit:Peter Rae
Landlords valued tenants who were paying rent on time and looking after their rentals well,he said,adding they would be in a good position to negotiate a smaller rise in rents.
Tenants’ Union of NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said renters were making up to 100 applications for a home unsuccessfully,sometimes after receiving a no-grounds eviction with a set end date.
“It pushes people into quite unsafe environments,” Patterson Ross said. “They have to compromise on location but also on the quality and the size,and that can mean people are placing themselves in harm’s way in order to keep a roof over their head because there just aren’t the options available to them.
“This is really a very risky way to run an essential service.”
Some tenants who can afford a property are only being turned away because another applicant is more attractive in a competitive system.
Existing tenants may be less likely to ask for repairs if they risk getting a no-grounds eviction and facing the “Hunger Games of finding a new home”,he said.
With Elizabeth Redman