Australia’s rental crisis continues to worsen, with CoreLogic today reporting that rental growth strengthened in May rising another 1.0% in May taking the quarterly rate of growth to 3.0%:
The annual change in rents is now tracking at 8.8% across the combined capital cities and 10.8% across the combined regions.
Unit rents are rising at a faster annual pace than house rents across the combined capital cities (where house rents increased 8.6% compared to 9.1% across units) and the combined regional areas (where house rents rose 10.7%, behind the 11.0% gain in units).
“Early in the pandemic rental demand for medium to high density dwellings fell sharply due to a preference shift towards larger homes and a demand shock from closed international borders,” Mr Lawless said.
“As rental affordability pressures mount, demand for higher density rentals has steadily grown due to the unit sectors’ relative affordability advantage. More recently, demand has been boosted by international arrivals returning to the rental market.”
Separate data from CoreLogic also shows that listings have collapsed across the combined capital cities, down around 40% from their pre-pandemic level:
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As mentioned above, the rental crisis is being exacerbated by the rebooting of mass immigration, which the NSW and Victorian governments, the business lobby, and the edu-migration lobby all want expanded.
Where will all of these new Australians live when there already aren’t enough homes?
Australia’s renters are the forgotten victims of Australia’s busted housing market.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
