PHOTO: Rental vacancies skyrocketed in the Sydney CBD. Source: News Corp Australia
Rental vacancies have skyrocketed in the past month, but one Sydney area has been especially hard hit in what’s been heralded as “good news” for tenants but a “disaster” for landlords.
Coronavirus has driven a mass exodus of renters from Sydney’s pricey inner city suburbs.
Nearly one in seven rental properties in the Sydney CBD became vacant last month, while vacancies hit a near record-high in the Harbour City as a whole, SQM Research figures revealed.
Close to 29,000 rental properties in the Greater Sydney area were sitting empty by the end of April, an increase from about 21,500 vacancies in March.
The vacancies represented nearly 4 per cent of all rental housing.
The spike in empty homes helped push down rents, with the median asking price of a Sydney rental house now nearly 6 per cent cheaper than it was last year, while unit rents are about 5 per cent lower.
SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher said falls in rent could be far deeper if vacancies continued to rise.
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