Rental Vacancies Stats for Australian Capital Cities for the month of October 2013 fyi

The number of vacancies, this month’s figures reveal the fourth straight monthly decline on a national level – with Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and Hobart all recording a monthly decrease in vacancy rates.

 

Key Points

• Nationally, vacancies decreased, recording a vacancy rate of 2.0% during October 2013, coming to a total of 57,471 nationally.
• Melbourne has recorded the highest vacancy rate of the capital cities, revealing a vacancy rate of 2.7% and a total of 12,017.
• Darwin has recorded the tightest vacancy rate of the capital cities, revealing a vacancy rate of 1.0% and a total of 235 vacancies.
• Canberra has recorded the highest yearly increase in vacancies, climbing 1.1 percentage points to 2.1% since the corresponding period of the previous year (October 2012) and coming to a total of 1,087 vacancies
• Hobart was the capital city to record the largest yearly decrease in vacancies, falling by 0.5 percentage points to 1.5% since the corresponding period of the previous year (October 2012) and coming to a total of 426 vacancies.
• Brisbane and Darwin were the only capital cities to record monthly vacancy rate increases, rising a 0.1 percentage point during October 2013, recording vacancy rates of  2.2% and 1.0% respectively.
• Adelaide recorded the largest monthly vacancy rate decline of the capital cities, falling by 0.2 percentage points during October 2013 to record a vacancy rate of 1.3%, coming to a total of 2,285 vacancies.

More details:

We expect vacancies to begin to rise in the lead up the Christmas as this normally occurs during this time of year.

Observing the figures year-on-year, vacancies in some cities of Australia are much higher than this time in 2012, particularly in Perth, Brisbane and Canberra. Sydney has appeared to have held steady, despite a swift increase in sales activity in this capital city, pointing further to indications that the recovery being experienced there has been predominantly motivated by investors, rather that first home buyers at this stage. 

Calculations of vacancies are based on online rental listings that have been advertised for three weeks or more compared to the total number of established rental properties. We consider this to be a superior methodology compared to using a potentially incomplete sample of agency surveys or merely relying on raw online listings advertised.