Rental yields fall in capital cities

The rolling months change for Sydney showed further falls with a 1.3 per cent reduction for houses while apartments fell 0.2 per cent.

Managing director of SQM Research, Louis Christopher believes investors in Sydney are still likely to see some more pain.

“While Sydney did record a slight decline, our expectation is the Sydney rental market will still fall from here,” Mr Christopher explained.

Melbourne also saw declines in both houses and units over the month, dropping 0.2 per cent for houses and 0.7 per cent for units.

Hobart’s unit rental market increased 4.8 per cent over the month but houses declined 0.5 per cent.

Brisbane continues to be the only capital city to record increases in weekly rents over the month for both houses and units at 0.6 per cent for houses and 0.9 percent for units.

Vacancy rates

The data reveals the national residential rental vacancy rate marginally declined in August 2019 to 2.2 per cent from July. The total number of vacancies Australia-wide is now at 75,757 vacant residential properties, a decrease of 589 over the month but up 5,310 dwellings over the past 12 months.

Sydney, Perth and Adelaide recorded minor decreases of 0.1 per cent in vacancy rates. Brisbane, Canberra and Hobart increased by 0.1 per cent, with Hobart remaining the lowest in the country at 0.6 per cent. All other capital cities remained steady over the month.

“Residential property rental vacancy rates remained largely steady for the month of August with perhaps the exception of Perth which continues to record a recovering rental market,” Mr Christopher continued.

Sydney continues to have the highest vacancy rate in the country at 3.4 per cent, this time last year the rate was lower at 2.8 per cent.