Melbourne’s St Kilda Road and Southbank bookend top ten highest rental vacancy rates in Australia: SQM

Melbourne’s St Kilda Road and Southbank bookend top ten highest rental vacancy rates in Australia: SQM
Larry SchlesingerDecember 7, 2020

St Kilda Road on the Melbourne CBD fringe has the highest residential vacancy rate in Australia, according to figures compiled SQM Research.

There were 360 properties vacant in May in postcode 3004, which is predominantly St Kilda Road, equating to a vacancy rate of 13%. 

There are 3,651 apartments along St Kilda Road, according to Census 2011 data, and only seven separate houses. 

The census data indicates it is property investment hotspot with more than half of apartments (52.6%) on St Kilda Road rented. 

SQM Research data shows that the vacancy rate has actually declined on St Kilda Road having peaked at around 24% in January 2102. 

In total there are six Victorian postal codes on the top 10 list including two more in Melbourne

These are Doreen, 26 km north-east from of the city, has a vacancy rate of 11.2% with 142 properties vacant over May and Southbank, just across the Yarra from the CBD, with a vacancy rate of 9.7%.

Commenting on the high vacancy rates on St Kilda Road and Southbank, SQM Research director Louis Christopher suggests this may be driven by the rise in the number of new residential property developments that have come into these areas in recent years.

"I think there is no coincidence the two postcodes are in close proximity to each other," he says.

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Image of Southbank courtesy of Flickr.

Larry Schlesinger

Larry Schlesinger was a property writer at Property Observer

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