Summertime Sadness

Posted by Luke Graham

Trying to find a new home in an inner city suburb as a tenant can be difficult at the best of times, particularly if home seeking in the golden strip between the city and the surf. So what is the best strategy adopted by tenants to remain competitive and get that tenancy agreement they desire?

Form a malicious stampede and attack the summer time hot spots in massive competitive herds, berating the property manager until the applicant’s name comes across their eyelids as they sleep at night, paralysing them into submission and eventual acceptance of the tenancy application above all others.
Play the role of the strategist: walking into the home, nose up, chest out, sweater atop the shoulders, on the assumed ‘low season’ of tenant demand. ‘I guess I’ll take an application, there’s a few around here I like.’ Nurture the manager into a state of belief that they are the upper-middle class risk-free tenant the landlord desires.

Whether it is either of these, a combination of both or a pick of an array of other strategies, we can be sure of one thing: our cities tend to be burdened with more vacancies during summer time.

In Sydney, summer and winter vacancy shifts are 32 per cent; Brisbane experiences a peak-trough shift of 31 per cent; Melbourne 25 per cent; and in Darwin the difference between summer (wet) and winter (dry) seasons has recently reached 67 per cent.

This could make sense in quite a few ways: prospective tenants believe that summer is actually peak season; or they are travelling or visiting family, delaying house seeking until they ramp into the New Year, or they feel way too lazy to consume their holiday time moving all their ‘stuff’.

Therefore, it is best for our capital city investors to avoid having their property on the rental market when they have the least demand – during the summertime sadness.

Posted by Luke Graham, on 27th May 2014