City revival
I took this photo of Elizabeth Street in Sydney - during working hours! - on Monday January 17.
Pitt Street Mall this afternoon, absolutely chockers.
Great to see.
Rental trends
Rental vacancies ran extraordinarily high in some Sydney inner-city markets, but have normalised quite quickly this year.
This is Pyrmont, for example (charts via SQM Research):
Source: SQM Research
The weekly rental listings figures suggest that national rental vacancies have continued to decline from 16-year lows through April month to date.
This is Erskineville, in Sydney's inner west.
I've been to Melbourne over the past few weeks, and although Docklands was still showing some signs of tumbleweeds and empty cafes, the Melbourne CBD itself is by and large back to its former hustle and bustle, a few boarded up shops notwithstanding.
Even the Docklands rental vacancies appear to have normalised, in any case.
South-east Queensland has benefited from the highest interstate migration on record, and indeed even inner-city suburbs are now experiencing tight rental markets.
New Farm and Teneriffe, by way of a prime example:
And this is before international students and tourism numbers get back to hitting their straps.
Interestingly on parts of the Sunshine Coast we're just starting to see the first signs of an increase in rental vacancies, possibly representing a nascent tenant pushback against the surge in asking rents (although the main strip of the Gold Coast remains extremely tight).
Reports of the death of the Central Business District have been somewhat exaggerated...
