Domain’s September quarter rental report recorded annual house rental growth of 12.8% across the combined capital cities, with unit rents soaring a whopping 16.7%:
Extraordinary rental growth in Q3.
As shown above, unit and house rents are growing at double-digit rates across most capital city markets. This comes on the back of the tightest rental vacancies on record at just 0.9% nationally, with vacant rental listings down 48.6% year-on-year and at a record low:
Tightest rental vacancies on record.
The impact of rising immigration (including international students) is having a profound impact on the rental market, especially across the unit segment. This is evidenced by the fact that rents are soaring across inner Melbourne areas like Docklands and the CBD:
The biggest increases were in suburbs that had emptied during COVID-19 lockdowns, including Docklands, where unit rents skyrocketed by 20 per cent to a median $480 per week. Unit rents in Melbourne’s CBD soared by 19.4 per cent to $430…
“We continue to see strong rental growth, especially in student-friendly suburbs like the Docklands and Melbourne’s CBD,” [Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said]. “What we should expect is that rents will grow next year as more international workers and students return”…
“We would have more migrant workers filling apartments than any other groups,” [Lucas Real Estate Docklands director Dylan Emmett said]…
Domain’s Nicola Powell made similar comments about Sydney:
The return of skilled migrants and international students had added to already strong rental demand…
“Overseas migration and short-term arrivals are still below pre-pandemic levels, so you have this stream of demand that is going to rise at a time when vacancy rates are at a record low, so that dynamic is going to create pain for tenants”…
The Albanese Government used last month’s Jobs & Skills Summit as a trojan horse to lift temporary and permanent migration to record levels. This will necessarily add hundreds of thousands of extra people that will require housing.
Where will they live when there is already an extreme shortage of housing for the existing population? In tents? On the streets?
The only plausible outcome from Labor’s mass immigration drive is an even tighter rental market, skyrocketing rents, and an increase in homelessness across the community. It is an inequality disaster in the making.
