Southern Renters Migrate to Brisbane for More Affordable Rent

While Sydney’s market vacancy rate rises and desperate landlords slash rent in an attempt to hold on to tenants, Brisbane is seeing its own vacancy rate shrink as demand rises and absorbing the surplus stock, easing the concerns about the inner city’s oversupply. While in Queensland, the power may currently reside with the renters for the next year and a half, Research managing director, Louis Christopher predicts the market to favour landlords in two years.

An estimated 9886 residential rentals are sitting vacant in Brisbane in comparison to nearly 20,000 in Sydney, news.com.au reports.

Sydney’s vacancy rate is now the highest in 13 years as 2.8 per cent of the city’s units and houses are unoccupied. Despite this, the asking rent for a three bedroom house in the city remains the highest in the country at $707 a week. While for a house in Queensland rose 0.1 per cent in July to $452 a week and unit rents remained steady at $370 a week.

“For southerners, there’s definitely a standard of living benefit through doing the move — provided they can find a job in Brisbane or thereabouts,” said Mr Christopher.

“Up until two years ago that was the problem, but the Brisbane economy has been rebounding thanks to the end of the mining downturn and so job creation has increased and it’s become a little bit easier to do that move and find a job that goes with it,” Mr Christopher said.

Mr Christopher said he expected the surplus rental supply in Brisbane to continue to be absorbed in the next 12 to 18 months. However added, two years from now the market will significantly favour landlords.

Realestate.com.au chief economists Nerida Conisbee said that over the past year, the online portal had recorded a 12 per cent rise in demand for rental properties in Brisbane. Meanwhile in Sydney, demand for units and houses had fallen 25 per cent over the same period.

“We track rental demand on views per listing and Brisbane is well up, so it’s not surprising we’re seeing this drop in the vacancy rate,” Ms Conisbee said.

“There just seems to be this recovery occurring in the Queensland economy and renters are often a better indicator of what’s happening than buyers, because they can be driven by speculation.”