Cush for Comment: Low rental vacancy rates ‘an inevitability’
With low rental vacancy rates across Brisbane, Brisbane auctioneer Haesley Cush weighs in on the coming new year.
I’m starting to get a bit concerned about January. Every year in January, rental enquiry spikes.
Anyone who has been around the rental industry knows it and plans around it.
Landlords aim to get their leases to finish at that time to minimise vacancy and maximise rent.
Agencies manage holidays around it to handle the influx of enquiry.
Local tenants try to have their leases renewed before Christmas to avoid standing in long lines at open homes and missing out.
This wave is fuelled by many factors.
The most prominent are students that are moving from other places at the start of a new year and families that have moved for work, or other reasons, in time for the start of the school year. Combine this with all of those tenants that have had their seasonal leases expire.
Separately, over the last 12-18 months, a record number of landlords have been selling their investment properties.
They are taking advantage of capital price increases against the increase in expenses. These properties are largely selling to homeowners not investors.
Now consider all of these factors and imagine how big the wave of new tenants will be next January given how strong interstate migration has been this year.
Consider how many properties have been removed from the rental market. This all leads to a major intersection of the supply versus demand lanes.
Unless there are some new properties in the market, then a further spike in rents in January and record low vacancy rates seems like an inevitability.
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Originally published as Cush for Comment: Low rental vacancy rates ‘an inevitability’