Too much government: Australian property investors are quitting, so rents are rising at 25 per cent a year. By the Courier-Mail.

In every city across Australia the rent crisis is hitting hard. Anyone who needs to rent finds out very quickly there is very little on offer and prices are rising rapidly.

For property owners, however, it’s a red-hot market. The single biggest risk for private investors in property investment — the risk of missing rental income — has effectively been removed.

But private investors are quitting this lucrative market in droves; As Hayden Groves, the president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia puts it, “investors have been running for the hills”.

Why are investors giving up when capital city asking rents are rising by 25 per cent a year?

The reality is that vacancy rates — the key measure in judging the rental market — sit near 1.8 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne and less than 1 per cent in some other cities. To take the city of Perth as an example there is a vacancy rate of 0.5 per cent.

If you ask property owner groups such as the REIA or the Australian Landlords Association why are private owners quitting? They generally point to the same thing — excess regulation. …

Socially, the existence of a super low rental vacancy rate is bad news — it triggers homelessness at the bottom end of the market and considerable stress across the entire housing system.

Some might not like the fact that private property owners control the market but they do — and that is not going to change anytime soon.

Soon only the government will want to rent out houses. Just imagine what the woke social engineers will do with that — no homes for the unwoke! Social credit scores coming up.