Record Brisbane rent growth slows ... slightly. See how your suburb fared

Brisbane’s rental prices have hit a record high, but a new report has given tenants a glimmer of hope, with signs the city’s steep increases are easing.

Domain’s March 2023 Rental Report, released on Thursday, shows that while prices have continued to increase, the rate of their growth has slowed.

Unit dwellers in the Ipswich suburb of Flinders View had the biggest average rent increase in Queensland.Credit: Google Earth

Unit-owning landlords reaped most of the benefit, with a year-on-year increase of 16.3 per cent, compared to 12 per cent for houses. Quarter-on-quarter increases show a starker divide, with units up by 4.2 per cent and house rentals by just 1.8 per cent.

“In Brisbane, there is this kind of disconnect between house and unit rents, and it’s particularly a strong trend over the last six months,” Domain research and economics chief Nicola Powell said.

When it came to unit rentals, Powell said a post-pandemic return of overseas migrants was a major cost driver.

“When you think about where units are situated, they’re central. They’re in those prime locations; they’re around universities, they’re in CBDs and, generally speaking, most demand in urban areas for rentals is sourced from overseas,” Powell said.

The single biggest factor for rental affordability was the vacancy rate, which had eased ever so slightly from a record Brisbane low of 0.6 per cent in February to 0.7 per cent in March.

While Powell said this was “certainly a good sign” for struggling renters, there was still a long way to go.

Domain’s Dr Nicola Powell.

“It’s still very much a landlord’s market, and what we benchmark as a more balanced market is a vacancy rate of between 2 and 3 per cent,” she said.

The biggest increase was a staggering 56.2 per cent for units in the south Ipswich suburb of Flinders View, based on a relatively small sample size of 59 properties. The average weekly rent for a unit there was now $410.

The principal at Flinders View-based Full Circle Property Management, Karen Wellen, said she was surprised by the data, as there were not many units in the suburb.

Duplexes were, however, being built in new estates, which Wellen suggested would be the bulk of the increase.

“They’ve got $250 a week for a one-bedder down at the shops in the old section of the suburb, then you look at these duplexes, where they are probably getting $450 to $500 a week,” she said.

“There are a few new estates being built, and as soon as they’re ready, they’re on the market.”

Powell said Wellen’s suspicion was almost certainly correct.

“When you look at the suburb data, where you’re seeing the strongest rates of growth are very small rental markets,” she said.

“When you have a look at the suburbs that have the highest number of rentals, which is the way I like to look at it because you’re then capturing the biggest bulk of tenants, it’s areas like Brisbane City, South Brisbane, Fortitude Valley.

“All of these areas have still seen significant increases, 14 to 19 per cent increases.”

It was a similar story in other capitals, Powell said.

“Across the combined capitals, we’re now seeing the longest stretch of continuous rental price growth on record as house rents rise for the eighth quarter in a row and unit rents rise for the seventh,” she said.

“For the first time since 2009, all capital cities have record house rents, highlighting the rental crisis the country is currently going through.”

Domain is majority owned by Nine, publisher of this masthead.