It’s not even a week since turmoil gripped world stock markets in what is said to be the biggest financial crisis since the great depression and fueled by the biggest housing and credit bubble in history, but the Real Estate Sprukers are at it again.
SYDNEY’S rental squeeze has hit a new low with desperate tenants vying for only 739 available rental properties on the market across the whole of the city yesterday.
739? Really. Calling all property investors, rental vacancy rates are so low, house prices will double, no triple next year. “It’s never been a better time to buy”(TM). Don’t worry about debt or owners capacity to pay. It’s so bad, it’s causing rental rage!
Real-estate agents managing Sydney’s rental market are copping abuse and threats from prospective tenants due to the squeeze on property vacancies.
A survey of 200 agents around NSW in August found that about a third of respondents had been threatened or abused over the phone by potential tenants within the past month.
SQM Research data suggests the current rental vacancies rate are 3.6% in Sydney, with approximately 20,000 properties listed, yes that is twenty thousand listings.
Meanwhile the Sydney Morning Herald reports
Newtown real-estate agent Rowen Kelly has 10 vacant homes on his books and not one prospective renter heading through today.
This must mean Rowen Kelly won’t cop any abusive renters today. That’s just as well.
Kelly goes to to say “We’re actually having to drop rents because owners are raising their prices based on media reports where they think that, with rent, the sky’s the limit. That’s not the case at all. Tenants are looking at properties and doing their sums as to what they can and can’t afford and they can’t.”
Could this in fact be a case where if wages don’t increase at the same rate than rent, it impacts the renters ability to pay rent. Greedy owners, spurred on by spruking Real Estate agents have just priced them self out of a market, where the sky is the limit. No more 20-30% capital gains per year, now no more rental income. Umm, what comes next?
» City of five million, just 739 homes for rent – News Limted, 24th September 2008.
» Property squeeze causing rental rage – The Sydney Morning Herald, 24th September 2008.
» 10 Sydney rentals no one’s inspecting … – Sydney Morning Herald, 24th September 2008