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With vacancy rates plateauing at about 5.5 per cent, landlords in Darwin are being urged to pay attention to quality tenants to safeguard them against an empty property this wet season.
The reality is that there’s still a surplus of 1,200 rental properties in the Darwin market, the same figure as six to eight months ago.
The market is levelling out with virtually the same amount of new tenants and new rental properties hitting the market every month.
Raine & Horne Darwin, for example, is averaging 20 new managements a month and 20 new leases.
We’ve consistently had about 25 vacant properties at the end of each month for the past six months. Yet we’ve been putting on 20 new managements and leasing around the same number of rental properties. This means we have a lively rental market, but the new activity isn’t eating into the surplus – it’s a zero sum game.
With the Darwin investment market in a holding pattern, be warned that the duty is on landlords to be sensible about their weekly rental expectations.
If you’re putting the property into the rental market for the first time, you need to be realistic about the asking price. This means listening to your property manager and checking online to see what similar properties are leasing for.
If you don’t listen to the market, you’ll be an investor without an income.
For landlords who are facing the end of a lease, I’d advise them to approach their tenant before they test the market.
If you have a tenant who is looking after the property and paying the rent on time, approach them immediately with some carrots, such as a discount on their current weekly rent, to ensure they stay put.
Don’t try and convince them to stay after they have decided to move on. By then it will be too late.
The housing markets in the northern suburbs of Darwin such as Millner, Jingili and Moil continue to be stronger performers, with yields of 5.5 per cent still possible and vacancy rates below the Darwin average.
There are 350 two-bedroom apartments sitting vacant in Darwin, so this market still has some way to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glenn Grantham
Glenn purchased a residential sales and property management business in 1995, increasing sales turnover more than ninefold and doubling the size of the property management portfolio within 5 years. Glenn was recruited by Raine & Horne in 2004 and two years later his company went on to turnover 10 times the original sales figures and double the size of its property management list. Glenn was appointed general manager of Raine & Horne Darwin in 2008 and since then his team has maintained a position in the top ten offices internationally by volume of sales within the group. In 2012 they achieved the #2 position and had over 1,000 homes under management with 40 staff.
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