Residential vacancy rates have slipped across the Sydney market with many finding it more difficult to secure a rental accommodation, the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales (REINSW) has said.
It’s president John Cunningham said the REINSW vacancy rate survey in February saw the Sydney metropolitan market down 0.2 percent to 1.9 percent.
“Inner Sydney led the fall in rental accommodation available with a 0.2 percent decline at 1.7 percent; levels are last seen nine months ago.
“Middle Sydney fell 0.3 percent to 1.8 percent while outer Sydney remained steady at 2.2 percent,” Cunningham said.
He said short-term websites were such as Airbnb were not the main reason why rental accommodation was scarce in February but more of demand and supply issue.
“The supply is not matching the demand, there is just too little supply and too many looking, and this sometimes causes the rent to go up as well,” Cunningham told Elite Agent in a telephone interview.
Other areas in NSW that have slipped regarding rental accommodation vacancy includes the Hunter region at 0.2 percent with a 0.7 percent rise in Newcastle to 2.7 percent offset by a fall of 0.9 percent at 1.6 percent in the rest of the region.
In the Illawarra, vacancy rates fell 0.3 percent to 1.1 percent with Wollongong falling from 2.1 percent to 1.1 percent.
Across regional areas, Albury was down 0.8 percent at 3.2 percent, the South Coast fell 0.2 percent to 2.1 percent, and Northern Rivers slipped 0.5 percent to 1.1 percent.
Coffs Harbour rose 1.1 percent to 3.7 percent, and Central Coast gained 0.3 percent to 2.8 percent.
These figures derived from REINSW’s 19,000 members who had given their input on the rental scenario for the whole month of February this year.
“We had a high response rate for this survey, 30 percent out of 19,000 members, that is close to having over 600 businesses responding,” he said.
Cunningham said the peak rental season varied from year to year and clearly this February has been one of its busiest months to date.
Meanwhile, an Airbnb spokesperson told Elite Agent that tenants were encouraged to seek permission from their rightful landlords or property managers when putting up their rental up for rent when they go on holidays.
“We proactively encourage hosts to think carefully about their responsibilities, and request they seek relevant permissions from landlords, building managers, strata bodies and government authorities (where appropriate) before creating a listing. “
