Melbourne vacant rentals more than double since pandemic began
- Posted By Prince Lakshman
While there is a shortage of quality properties to be purchased in Melbourne, there is also an influx of vacant rental properties across the city’s inner suburbs and it has doubled since the start of the pandemic.
The suburbs with the most empty rentals include Melbourne’s CBD, South Yarra and Docklands, according to new data from realestate.com.au.
According to new figures from Propertyology, residential rental listings have gone up from 11,085 properties listed in February 2020 to a staggering 27,804 by the end of February 2021.
Before COVID-19 wreaked havoc into the world, the city and the suburbs with high population typically had a higher percentage of renters than other suburbs. However, vacancies dramatically rose due to the closure of international borders last year.
According to Propertyology head of research Simon Pressley, the CBD had 2582 homes listed for rent at the end of February 2020, just before COVID struck and forced nations to close their borders. Today, that has now ballooned to 7221 rental dwellings.
“The high volume of empty properties will be very concerning to landlords and the desperation is reflected in advertised rents, reducing from $530 per week a year ago to $390 per week now,” said Mr Pressley.
The empty rentals in Docklands had increased from 181 to 635 over the year ending February 2021 with rent prices effectively brought down from $620 to $430 per week.
Andrew Salvo, Ray White Southbank director said clever tenants could use the dire market conditions to purchase a similar property at a cheaper price.
He added that a number of renters had moved to other bigger or cheaper apartments.
He said his office would normally turn over about 30-40 rental properties a month but that figure had “pretty much tripled” since the pandemic.
“We’ve had a lot of tenants moving back home with their parents, moving interstate and moving back overseas,” Mr Salvo said.
“There was an initial surge of vacancies as everyone deserted the market. We had hundreds of keys dropped off the day borders were shut.”
Mr Salvo said that the inner city market heavily relies on international students and migration.