In Adelaide, Australia, rents have consistently remained the same until recently. While demand here is not necessarily up, available housing has become more limited and more and more real estate investors sell property off.
The Office of Consumer and Business Affairs provides figures to monitor the housing market, and show that Adelaide's median rate for a rental house have increased some 8 per cent.
While rents surged overall over 11 per cent, wage growth and the cost of living have not moved nearly as quickly. According to Elders City Plus's senior property manager Steve Taylor, "Over the past few years demand (for rental properties) has remained fairly constant…but the supply is shrinking because people are selling off their investment properties," as reported in AdelaideNow.
It becomes even more detrimental to current rental owners who are trying to increase their rents to tenants already living in their properties. According to Taylor, "Our policy is to advise our landlords not to increase rents on existing tenants because they can risk throwing out a good tenant, but they want to increase rents to cover their increasing costs."
What's more, it is likely that landlords will continue to want to raise rents in the coming months as the Reserve Bank plans to increase interest rates again next month. In addition, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is set to release fourth quarter figures for inflation, which will be high well over the central bank's target range (currently set at 2 to 3 per cent.)
