Rents have soared to record levels in many coastal areas in response to shrinking supply and rising demand from tenants moving out of the big cities and into regional locations. The Australian Financial Review reports that asking rents for houses in the Gold Coast region have surged 32% in the past 12 months to a record high, while units have risen 16%. Sunshine Coast houses also fetched record high rents, rising 18.5% for houses and 15.7% for units. “I’ve just never seen these large rises before,” says SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher. “We thought the migration away from the CBDs would be reversed, but it looks like people continue to seek out bigger spaces in areas offering desirable lifestyles. “We now know there won’t be a reversal of the trend away from the cities.” High tenant demand has pushed vacancy rates to record lows in markets like the Gold Coast, which is now well below 1%
SEQ Prestige Values Rise
Brisbane and the Gold Coast are leading the uplift in prime Australian residential markets over the past 12 months, according to Knight Frank’s latest Prime Global Cities Index which tracks the movement in the top 5% of the global residential market across each quarter. The research shows Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Perth all recorded growth between 3.5% and 4%. The global report notes that Australian markets overall are seeing lower growth than most other global markets, especially the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne which have experienced softer growth at 1.9% and 0.4% respectively. The report noted that global prime residential prices are rising at their fastest rate since Q4 2017 with housing markets in value terms increasing 4.6% over the past 12 months. “The five major Australian cities have reported positive annual growth every quarter since Q4 2017,” Knight Frank’s head of residential research, Michelle Ciesielski, says
