Will the rental shortage bring back property investors?

By Darryl Stringer • Oct 2nd, 2008 • Category: Buying and selling real estate

There’s a rental shortage across Australia at the moment, but it’s particularly bad in Sydney. Recent data suggests that there are just 739 properties currently available for rent in Sydney, a vacancy rate of just 1.2 per cent. You’d expect this would push rental prices up, making property investment a far more attractive deal than it has been, and with the massive instability in the stockmarket people who are looking for places to invest their cold hard cash might start looking at property.

There’s just one problem, at least for NSW buyers.

The NSW Government initiated a land tax a few years ago that resulted in a lot of Sydney investors leaving the market and investing in south-east Queensland. Well, now Sydney is paying the price, and there are calls for the taxes to be cut in order to encourage more investors.

Elsewhere in Australia the signs are good for investing in real estate. It’s a buyer’s market at the moment, with property sales staying fairly slow as there’s not a lot available for this time of year. And with real estate prices seemingly at a low point in the property cycle, the future looks good for capital gains over the long term.

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