Domain has released its latest rental report, which shows that the nation’s rental vacancy has plunged to a fresh low of only 0.8%. This is down from an already tight 1.3% at the same time last year:
As shown above, rents are zipped tight across every jurisdiction across Australia. In particular, vacancy rates across Sydney and Melbourne have halved with the mass return of immigration and international students.
This record tight vacancy rate is driving rents into the stratosphere, with house rents soaring by 14.6% across the combined capital cities in 2022:
Unit rents have risen even faster, growing 17.6% across the combined capital cities in 2022:
As you can see, Sydney and Melbourne unit rents are hyperinflating, up 18.6% and 20.0% respectively in 2022 on the back of the international student flood.
Domain noted that “it is the longest stretch of continuous rental price growth on record as house rents rise for the seventh consecutive quarter and unit rents for the sixth. Rental listings are down 38% annually and are at the lowest level on record for December”.
There is “an ongoing rental crisis in many parts of the country”, with the demand pressures being “fuelled by the return of international and domestic travel, overseas migration, and foreign students”, Domain warned.
Tenants Union NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said the country was in a permanent rental crisis.
“When we’re talking about these extremely low vacancy rates, whether it’s 1 per cent or 0.8 per cent, these are all bad numbers to have. They are well below a well-functioning system”, Paterson Ross said.
The rental situation is only going to get worse under the Albanese Government’s record immigration program.
Where are the hundreds of thousands of new migrants arriving every year supposed to live when there is already a chronic shortage of homes for the existing population? On the streets?
Labor’s Big Australia policy is an inequality disaster in the making that will create a permanent rental shortage forcing thousands of Australians into homelessness.
