Residential rental property market seems to be cooling, shows survey - Property Management Blog
A new Rent.com.au survey has provided a gauge of sentiment on the residential rental market conditions in Australia.
The poll ran across June 2018 and canvassed Australia’s property management teams to understand how they felt their local market was performing compared to the start of the year, and whether rents would likely move up or down in coming months.
Compared to the beginning of 2018, how do you think your local market is performing?
Property management teams in New South Wales and Queensland – above all other states and territories – fit into this category. Forty-two per cent (42%) of respondents from NSW and 32% of respondents from QLD said they felt the market has started to cool since the start of 2018. The pace is changing for the likes of NSW – as a cooling sales market in Sydney is putting pressure on landlords to consider stabilising or even reducing their rent.
The majority of property management teams in Victoria (44%) said there had been no change in the six months just gone, with a number indicating conditions were still tough in some areas. Rental prices have held steady across Melbourne as winter sets in and demand for properties slows. The lack of price growth across the city is good news for tenants, but with continual supply coming in from developers who are building apartments in inner Melbourne, rents are likely to remain fairly steady.
The worst may be over for the Perth rental market slump – brought on, in part, by a drop off in population and a big increase in supply that resulted in an oversupply of the market. Sixty-seven per cent (67%) of property management teams in Western Australia indicated the market was ‘somewhat improved’ with fewer vacancies.
Do you see rents heading up or down in the next three months in your area?
The bulk of agents that responded from NSW (42%) said they thought rents would head down in the next three months.
Agents in QLD could not see any drastic change in the near future, with 47% of QLD respondents saying there’d be no obvious change to prices.
Rents are most likely to start trending downwards in WA, with 66% of total respondents from the west coast indicating a downward trend in prices is likely.
SQM Research: Sydney vacancies at an all-time high
The data from Rent.com.au is not out of line with the newest data set from SQM Research, which indicated the Sydney rental market has recorded the highest rental vacancy rate in at least 13 years. The rental vacancy rate in the New South Wales capital rose to 2.8% in June, with an estimated 19,572 residential rental dwellings sitting vacant and available for rent.
Most cities recorded a rise, with Melbourne up 1.6%, Brisbane up 3.0%, Canberra to 0.9% and Adelaide up 1.5%. Vacancies remained steady in Perth (4.1%), Darwin (3.5%) and Hobart (0.7%).
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