Sydney - City of five million, just 739 homes for rent

SYDNEY'S rental squeeze has hit a new low with desperate tenants vying for only 739 available rental properties on the market across the whole of the city yesterday.

Premier Nathan Rees has agreed to meet with the Real Estate Institute for crisis talks as figures to be released today reveal vacancy rates have remained below 2 per cent for more than two years.

The situation is so bad that stressed-out renters have turned on real estate agents with one in three agents reporting either themselves or their staff have been abused and even attacked.

Some agents said they had called police to remove irate would-be tenants from their offices and were being abused on a daily basis. Others said tenants had been in tears because they felt they could not compete with the number of people looking for properties.

Police have also had to sort out traffic congestion as up to 30 or 40 applicants turn up for open house inspections.
"It is the worst we have ever seen," said REI president Steve Martin. "The situation is now so grave we are unfortunately experiencing incidents of rental rage."

Sydney's overall vacancy rate is 1.2 per cent, no change from last month, according to the institute. Worst hit have been the suburbs between 10 and 25km from the city centre where there was a 0.1 per cent drop in rental vacancies to 1.2 per cent over the past month.

Mr Martin said the demand for rental properties had outgrown supply by about three to one with Sydney's population growing at more than 1400 a week, almost double the number of rental properties available on the latest figures.

Mortgage defaults have also forced more families into the rental market.
Punitive taxes including stamp duty and land tax, coupled with a lack of land being released for new development, have been blamed for the stagnating market.

The institute has proposed that the State Government scrap the contentious land tax and offer investors a full rebate of their stamp duty over seven years with a partial rebate if they sell before that.

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City of five million, just 739 homes for rent | NEWS.com.au

 

Oh an coincidentally ... 28,120 properties for sale.

But that can't be right? I mean theres a property shortage!

http://tinyurl.com/4whue8

 

It matters not that they're sold or whatever.

The point is simply if there was truly a property shortage there would logically be 0 for sale. The 28,120 demonstrates that this is far from the fact.

 

02 mate

There are markets and there are markets.

Sydney rental vacancies have been decreasing for 4 years now as people either decided to sell and rent, or lost their homes because they couldn't
afford the repayments and again have to rent.

On top of that our existing population is increasing and new people are moving in all the time.

It's really a sad situation and I hope the state government does something to motivate developers to build properties and us investors to buy them or things can only get worse.

Cheers

 

02

Let's say that you are right and there are 28,000 properties available for sale.
Has it crossed your mind that perhaps many people can't afford to buy them??

Cheers

 

Bill, you just hit the nail on the head and I didn't have to do anything.

That is precisely the point.

Yes, its overpriced, you 've finally recognised it and actually said it.

Proof that its overpriced will be an ongoing increase in the for sale inventory ..such as we've seen in the Danish market for example.

Keep your eye on the for sale inventory number...its key.

 

02

I have been doing this for a while and there is no much stock for sale.
I also see it in the streets, there are not many for sale signs around and the few I see have the SOLD sticker all over them.

I know it's hard for a lot of us to manage a mortgage but we are doing it.

People will go out of their way to keep a roof over their head.
We may postpone our holiday to Cologne and won't buy French perfume this year but I am sure we will survive.

Cheers

 

Too bad you can't drop around for a beer.

cheers
02

 

I know...
Maybe next year, we want to visit Sweden in the end of Summer and have some friends we want to visit in Munich during Oktoberfest

 

Hi guys,

P/Es are around 35 for residential property. It goes back to supply and demand...

The government has FHSAs to help out.

Cheers,

Dan