The crisis afflicting Australian tenants continues to worsen with Domain’s rental vacancy report for February recording a record low vacancy rate across the combined capital cities of just 0.7% (0.8% nationally):
Vacancy rates hit record lows of 0.8% in Melbourne, 0.9% in Sydney and 0.6% in Brisbane, whereas Perth remained at an all-time low of 0.3%.
Melbourne experienced the largest drop in vacancies, down 64% annually.
Commenting on the results, Domain’s chief of research and economics, Dr Nicola Powell, said the mass arrival of migrants and overseas students had overrun rental supply.
“We haven’t had enough investment activity, we haven’t been building enough housing … and then on top of that, we’ve now got international students and migration returning”.
Powell noted there has been a spike in overseas interest, driven by Chinese students who were told in January that online degrees would no longer be recognised in China.
“That really opened the floodgates”, Powell said, noting Domain.com.au rental searches from China were up almost 90% from December.
I have said it repeatedly and I will say it again. Where will the hundreds of thousands of migrants and international students arriving in Australia live when there is already a chronic shortage of homes for the incumbent population?
The Albanese Government’s Big Australia immigration policy is an unmitigated disaster for Australian tenants, which will see rents soar and thousands of people thrown into homelessness.
