Over the 2014 calendar year, advertised rental rates on a national basis increased by 2.6% for both houses and units.

At a capital city level, the rental performance across the different housing stocks was more varied. House rents rose by 1.2% over the year, while unit rents outperformed the detached housing market, up 2.5% over the 12 months to December 2014.

Though the property sales market has experienced significant growth in the past 12 months, in particular Sydney and Melbourne, the rental market has lagged behind. This is a normal event and is consistent with historical trends.When property values rapidly rise, their is a delay period before rent begin to catch up. But this is conditional upon supply and demand conditions. In a market that has significant numbers of new units being completed and new housing estates released there will be a further delay in market rents catching up. We saw this in Sydney in the early 2001 to 2003 and Melbourne in 2002 to 2005.

So don't be disheartened by the low growth int he rents over the past 12 months and be assured that they will continue to increase over the short to medium term but at lower growth rates that we experienced in the past years. 

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