A new report shows Brisbane tenants are paying $10 per week more in rent.
Bees Nees Research Managing Director, Rob Honeycombe says Brisbane’s rents rose for both apartments and houses during the March quarter. Residential Tenancies Authority stats released today show upward pressure on rents right across Brisbane’s suburbs.
“People will point to the January floods as the reason for rents rising, and some heavily-effected suburbs did have spikes in their rents. A 2 bedroom apartment in St Lucia for example jumped $20 per week, with many apartments still damaged at the start of the University year. But other flood-impacted areas like Rosalie, Milton and Paddington actually saw a drop of $5 per week.”
“We’d argue the trend was already in place for increases to rents. Without new construction in recent years the market was always going to catch up and we now have a rental housing shortage. Brisbane tenants have had pretty flat rents for over 2 years but their rents are now definitely on the rise”.
A median 3 bedroom Brisbane house now rents for $390 per week, while a 2 bedroom apartment is $375.
“One clear impact of the floods was that unless tenants had to move, they stayed put. Turnover was lower than for the same period in 2010, especially in inner-city suburbs where there were 7% less new bonds lodged this past quarter.”
We were recently asked to dust off our crystal ball for 
“Tens of thousands of new homes will be forced upon traffic-choked suburbs under a State Government plan that councils have condemned as being unrealistic and shrouded in secrecy.”
