In recent years, more people in Australia may have been opting to rent a house rather than buying their own as they have been priced out of the market, but according to the latest information from CoreLogic PR Data, rental price rises have been 'soft' for 2015 as a whole.
While we are still seeing double-digit annual growth in house prices across the nation on average, aside from the two biggest cities - Melbourne and Sydney - rises in the cost of renting a home have been far gentler.
In October, the price of renting across the nation rose by 0.1 per cent compared to the month prior, according to the CoreLogic RP Data statistics. This means the nationwide level of rental rises for the past 12 months climbed from 0.5 per cent to 0.6 per cent.
The organisation said rental prices have remained relatively low and growth has been soft for a number of reasons. For one, the low mortgage rates have meant that many have still been able to afford to buy their own home in recent times. This means more Aussies are taking advantage of interest rates while they remain low.
On top of this, there has been a real increase in the number of people from across the world who have been investing in rental properties in Australia in the past year. This means supply has been able to match demand and rents have not climbed as a result.
Cameron Kusher, CoreLogic research analyst, said that with just two months remaining to the end of the year, we can now see that the overall rental increases for 2015 will be rather low, which will be good news for tenants across the nation, potentially increasing demand as we move into 2016.
"Clearly, the increase in investment stock is providing landlords with little scope to lift rental rates while the low mortgage rate environment provides little incentive to push yields higher," said Mr Kusher.
