Local Housing Squeeze Tightens Its Grip on Australians
The lines of tenants queuing outside rental properties on a weekend are only expected to get longer as pressures on Australia’s rental market intensify.
Fresh data released this week pointed to a re-acceleration in rents as well as a stabilisation in home prices, a situation that St George economists have labelled a “double-whammy” for the one-third of Australian households that rent.
Higher demand and low vacancy rates prompted advertised rents to lift 2.5 percent in the March quarter, according to CoreLogic data, up from two percent in the December quarter.
The property data firm also released new homes data for March this week showed prices lifting 0.6 percent, the first uptick after 11 months of declines driven by the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA’s) sharp increase in interest rates….