Rental Vacancy Just Hit An All-Time Low And Yes, The Sharehouse Market Is Cooked Too

Australia’s rental vacancy rate reached an all-time low in May and has continued to break records since, while sharehouse vacancy also plummeted this year as unaffordability locks more people into renting long-term. Yes, we can blame our bonkers house prices. Even though lockdowns made many people never want to live with housemates again, as it turns out finding a room in a sharehouse is still fucking hard. “Despite the initial increase in vacancy in the pandemic, demand in inner-city areas has returned and vacancy is now low,” Flatmates.com.au Community Manager Claudia Conley told PEDESTRIAN.TV. “Occupancy is back to pre-pandemic levels and in some areas demand is far outstripping supply for rooms in sharehouses.” Nationally, there was a ratio of five people looking for each room in a sharehouse available on Flatmates.com.au at the end of the financial year. It dipped slightly since a two-year peak in March 2022 when there were eight people for each room available, but this is still bad news. Zooming in on some areas the situation gets much

dropped in all capital cities Nicola Powell current net migration rate is 5.4 per 1000 population 25 per-fucking-cent nationwide even more in Sydney “No one can keep up with that level of price growth, Dominic Perrottet announced a First Home Buyer Choice scheme “The rental market and the sales market are interlinked and I think we’ve got people in the private rental market that probably should be in social housing,” she said. “That needs to be something that’s addressed by government. We need to make sure our most vulnerable Australians are being housed in social housing. That puts additional pressure on the rental market when really they should be in a social home.” 

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worse. In June, 11.3 people were vying for each sharehouse room available in SA, down from its March peak of more than 48 people per room. Radelaide!!? There was a ratio of 16.4 people looking at each available room in the NT, down from its astonishing January peak of 103.6 people (!!!) per room. And while Melbourne and Sydney don’t seem as bad in comparison with a ratio of about 6:1, finding rooms in some inner-city suburbs is practically impossible. A room in a Redfern sharehouse costs an average of $293 per week, lol, and you’ll be competing with 19 other room-seekers, according to Flatmates.com.au. Want to live in Fitzroy? You’ll be competing with 51 people per room. Rental property vacancy has since this time last year and hit a new record in August of just 0.9 per cent. “The national vacancy rate was at 1.0 per cent for the third consecutive month [in June] and this is the lowest on our record that we’ve seen,” Chief of Research and Economics for Domain Dr told PEDESTRIAN.TV. Now, it’s dropped again. In August Adelaide had the lowest vacancy rate with just 0.3 per cent of rental properties, or literally 691 properties, available to lease, according to SQM Research. “That is like finding a needle in a haystack in terms of a renter trying to find a rental to lease,” Powell said. Melbourne had the most available rentals in August with the nation’s highest vacancy rate of 1.4 per cent, followed closely by Sydney at 1.3 per cent. But this is still *really low* and shows a declining trend. Both fell by 0.1 of a percentage point since June and dropped massively since May 2021 when Melbourne had 3.6 per cent of rentals available. Canberra’s vacancy rate in August was 0.9 per cent, Brisbane 0.7 per cent, Darwin 0.6 per cent, Hobart 0.5 per cent and Perth 0.5 per cent. However, Australia’s migration rate has been declining steeply even since before the pandemic and , which is a 4.4 per cent decline from 2021. So with fewer people in the country overall, why is it so hard to find a place to rent rn? The main reasons are the high cost of living and housing affordability in the toilet. “The cost of living has contributed greatly to the large increase in demand for rentals with more people seeing shared accommodation as a long-term and legitimate way to live,” Conley said. “The limited stock and competitive market are adding extra stress for room-seekers.” Well, that’s just grim. First my petrol, electricity and lettuces, now the roof over my head. And house prices are out of control. They rose in 2021 alone and , naturally. ” Powell said. “The escalation in property prices during the pandemic has locked people into the rental market for longer because of their inability to break into the housing market.” Powell said it was good to see state and federal governments attempting to address the issue with a number of immediate relief measures like shared equity schemes and fewer taxes. NSW Premier to reform stamp duty in June, which will allow buyers to choose between an upfront payment or a smaller annual property tax. But Powell said ultimately we needed to balance supply and demand, and one effective way to do that is to build more affordable and public housing. Until then, the rental crisis is forecast to last quite a while longer. Ball’s in your court, Albo.