Rents set to rise
Residential property vacancies fell again from 59,345 to 56,953 (or from 1.7 per cent to just 1.6 per cent) in October, according to SQM Research.
Clearly, then, vacancies are now well down from 74,222 (or 2.1 per cent) a year earlier.
This month's drop was driven by Sydney declining from 20,590 to 19,611, and by Melbourne dropping from 22,269 to 21,316.
CBD vacancy rates are still high in the two big cities, but declined to 7½ per cent and 8 per cent respectively, reported SQM.
With those two cities now reopening, vacancies will most likely to continue to drop from here.
A closer inspection (click to expand the chart below) reveals that the trend in Hobart and Adelaide is still tightening from already low vacancy levels, but Darwin and Canberra now just appear to have more vacancies being freed up.
Although there has been little to no immigration over the past year, more households have purchased second homes and vacancies have dropped sharply across Australia.
In fact, vacancy rates are now at the lowest level in the 10 years since March 2011 according to SQM, and are still declining. quite quickly.
It looks as though we might have seen the last of the lockdowns for Sydney and Melbourne - touch wood - in which case the CBDs will now fill up again.
In any case, expect rents to keep rising with vacancy rates the tightest in a decade, and tightening.
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Source: Covidlive.com.au
