Mining towns continue to have high vacancies and falling rents: SQM
A number of mining towns are recording ongoing falls in vacancies, signalling that the housing bust in the mining towns is possibly coming to an end, according to SQM Research’s latest newsletter.
Residential vacancies in Karratha, Port Hedland, Mackay and Gladstone are all down compared to his time last year.
Reflecting its high vacancy rate, Darwin continues to record big falls in asking rents, with units falling by another 2.5 percent for the month of January (houses down 0.1 percent).
Perth continues to record the largest yearly declines.
However, rents did rise slightly for the month at 1.1 percent for houses and 0.5 percent for units.
Meanwhile, Hobart is the strongest rental market in the nation with rents up by 6.7 percent for houses in January and 11.6 percent for units.
As noted, Hobart also has the lowest vacancy rate of all capital cities at just 0.7 percent.
Brisbane remains a flat rental market with falls in rents being recorded for units in the inner ring of between 2.5 percent to 5 percent declines, against the background of a relatively high vacancy rate of 3.3 percent.
Overall, rents continue to rise at about 2 percent per annum nationwide with some variability reflecting the mixed Australian housing market.
So far, the feared oversupply for Sydney and Melbourne has not yet eventuated and we are aware of some scaling back of developments, particularly in the Melbourne rental market.