CoreLogic’s latest housing market summary shows that Australia’s rental market continues to deteriorate, with vacancies and listings hitting fresh lows, and rents continuing to soar at double-digit rates.
Total rental listings across the combined capital cities have hit their lowest level in at least a decade, down 31.2% year-on-year:
And the decline in listings has been most pronounced in Melbourne (-36.0%) and Sydney (-32.1%) where immigration is rebounding most strongly:
Meanwhile, the vacancy rate nationally has plunged to a new record low 1.0%, with both the capital cities and regions equally tight:
Reflecting this extreme tightness, rents nationally have soared 10.0% in the year to October, with the capital cities (+10.3%) now experiencing faster rental growth than the regions (+9.3%).
As I keep saying, Australia’s rental market is a disaster in the making.
Over the pandemic, the rental market tightened because of the pandemic-induced reduction in household size, with households suddenly needing more space for home offices, etc:
Now the Albanese Government has launched the biggest immigration program in this nation’s history, which has already seen migrant arrivals soar to pre-pandemic levels:
The federal budget forecasts nearly one million net overseas migrant arrivals over the next four years:
Where will these circa one million migrants live when there is already a dire shortage of rental homes for the incumbent population?
The Albanese Government’s mass immigration drive is an unmitigated disaster that will necessarily see the rental market tighten further, push rents into the stratosphere, and see thousands of Australians driven into homelessness.
