Australian vacancies and rents
It's been a tough year, and people are looking for a much better 2021...I'm still focused on this year though...I have a budget to write after all.
I was looking at rental trends in the course of my job today and thought I'd share some.
Vacancy rates and vacancies
I found it interesting that the national vacancy rate this year is is slightly lower than 12 months ago when, due to pandemic job losses I would have thought it would be a little higher. There was some fairly hefty stimulus money thrown around by the Australian Government which has probably held the vacancy rate down I guess though.
You'll note most capital cities have recorded a decline in vacancy rates in the September month although both Melbourne and Sydney have higher rates, Sydney marginally but Melbourne much higher, clearly due to the severe lockdown measures the Victorian Government imposed during their second wave of pandemic.
September 2019 to September 2020 is fairly stable though, which surprised me a little.
I find the next set of figures really interesting. It shows weekly rent amounts for houses and units across the capital cities and nationally.
Take the eight capital city weekly house rents for instance. You can see the two largest cities in Australia, Sydney and Melbourne, suffering huge huge dips in weekly rent over the last 12 months with the smaller cities like Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and Darwin recording strong growth in weekly rent. Brisbane, also a huge city, has very small growth only.
It's also interesting to note the sharp decline in Hobart for unit weekly rents; A direct correlation to the fact that much of the Hobart unit-market was taken up by short-term rental, AirB&B tenants, rather than long-term 12 month leases. Of course that segment dried right up in the pandemic...I bet you there are many unit owners in Hobart wondering how they will service their mortgages right now...Whilst sustaining empty properties.
Nationally though there is a trend upwards in weekly rents over the last 12 months in both the house and unit segments. This is good for investors of course, but not so good for renters...Wages are not keeping up with these increases in rent, or in sale prices for that matter; This is a massive issue.
I thought it might be interesting for you guys from other countries to take a look at these figures, gathered from SQM Research, in the course of my day today. It's part of my job to keep the team at work apprised of the trends, and it's essential for me to know what's up and down in the market place as I need to advise my clients effectively, and from a position of understanding.
This may seem like a simple set of figures, but its figures like these that huge decisions are made around and, I'll be honest, some of it was expected, and some was a little surprising to me...And to many investors; Some are happy and many are not so happy. This comes more into play when I look into the vacancy rate in specific areas around cities, which I will do for Adelaide, my home city at some stage.
So tell me, what's going on in your neck of the woods...Are rents up or down, vacancies up or down? How's your investment going and how do you interpret the fluctuations here?
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