CoreLogic’s latest rental market snapshot is depressing reading if you are a tenant in Australia.
It shows that rents across Australia’s combined capital cities soared by 11.1% in the year to February off a halving in vacancy rates to just 0.9%:
Rental vacancy rates in Melbourne, in particular, plummeted by over two-thirds over the year after borders reopened and international students and migrants flooded into the city.
The next CoreLogic chart shows that actual rental listings across the combined capital cities are tracking at around their lowest level since 2014, despite a circa 2 million increase in the capital cities population over the same period:
PropTrack has released its own rental data, which shows that rental vacancy rates across the combined capital cities has more than halved since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020:
The changes in vacancy rates across the various jurisdictions in illustrated in the table below:
“Strong demand for rental properties continues to push vacancy rates lower, and prices higher”, PropTrack notes.
“Almost all regions across the country have rental vacancy rates below 2% – meaning less than 2% of all rental properties are available for lease”.
“A vacancy rate below 2% points to extremely tight conditions”.
In particular, “Sydney and Melbourne rental markets have tightened considerably over the past year following a resurgence in inner-city demand”.
“Lack of available supply will drive continued rapid rent price increases over 2023”.
“The financial pressure renters across the country are already feeling will be exacerbated over the remainder of 2023”, PropTrack warns.
The primary reason why rental markets have tightened so viciously is obvious: the Albanese Government has opened the immigration floodgates, resulting in 400,000 net overseas migrants pouring into Australia in 2022, with similar volumes expected this year.
As noted by Westpac this month, “the stronger–than–expected surge in migration helps explain the significant tightening in rental markets and sharp escalation in rents”.
The Albanese Government’s ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration policy is an inequality disaster in the making that will drive ongoing strong rental inflation, severe financial strain for lower-income Australians, and increasing homelessness.
