Rental market so stressed, people are considering moving in before current tenants can move out

The Northern Rivers’ rental market is still extremely tight, and it’s made even worse as heartbroken locals battle with Sydneysiders for the few available properties.

Community worker Nicqui Yazdi is waiting to move to a new rental home after months trying to secure new housing during the panemic. File photo.

There has been a “slight improvement” in the Northern Rivers’ rental market, but people on the ground are still facing difficult situations, such as overlapping tenancies.

The July vacancy rates for the area reached 1.5 per cent, which in normal times would be considered an extremely tight market, but it’s a world away from the 0.3 per cent recorded in March and May 2021, according to the chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of NSW, Tim McKibbin.

“The rate was 1 per cent in June, so it’s gone up by 0.5 per cent to July, which is a trend showing that the market is improving,” he said.

“But by improvement, I mean there are more properties available, but at 1.5 per cent that is an extremely tight market.”

Availability of homes to rent is only one dimension of the rental housing issue, with lockdowns, self-isolation, interstate borders and other limitations making it harder to move in the area.

Community worker Nicqui Yazdi had overstayed at her current rental contract in Lennox Head by four weeks because of lockdown restrictions.

And although she’s secured a place to live in Mullumbimby, she is unable to move in, and is even considering moving in before the current tenants move out.

“The current tenants at the Mullumbimby house both are intending to move to Queensland, however, the border restrictions say that nobody is allowed to move from this area into Queensland at the moment,” she said.

“Quite possibly, we may have to move in with the current tenants until they can move out, which it’s a very strange situation to be put into.

“It was very difficult to find a house in the first place.

“I did a lot of inspections of places that were so overpriced they were not affordable at all, and it was really frustrating when I was looking for a place in the last few months was that half the people who were inspecting homes were from Sydney and they were looking for short term residential leases because they were escaping the lockdown in Byron, Lismore and Ballina.

“I watched a number of homes disappear from the market before anyone could inspect them because they had been rented out to people from Sydney for a few hundred dollars more a week, some real estate agents told me.”

Ms Yazdi already went through this already in 2020, when she moved out of Mullumbimby at the height of the pandemic’s first wave.

“At that time, we really didn’t know what this was going to mean, we didn’t know what was coming at us, and I was anxious about having open houses, it was pretty stressful,” she said.

Mr McKibbin said many people looking for a rental in the area had made unusual offers to real estate agents and landowners.

“People trying to secure a rental property are willing to pay a year in advance on rent before moving in, and not surprisingly, that can look very attractive to a landlord,” he said.

“People are renting properties without even seeing them, even buying them, when they only have a look at them the online.

“For the rest of the year, we see the trend of the market moving in this particular direction because of a number of economic influences, and unless they change, then I think things will continue as they are.

“The main influence on the market is undersupply, while the demand for housing is still growing.”