“We have seen that a lot of tenants are offering one to two months’ rent in advance and we have noticed some tenants offering an extra $5 or $10 to secure a property.”
Mr Kruger said it was not uncommon for 20 applicants to apply for a single home, with most applicants pre-applying before they even saw the property.
“The office is working around the clock — there just isn’t enough stock and people are trying to move quickly to avoid missing out,” he said.
REIQ chief executive officer Antonia Mercorella said rental markets in most parts of Queensland, including regional areas, were extremely competitive.
She said a combination of factors were making rental houses — rather than apartments and units — scarce, but the demand for them was greater.
“During the pandemic, the Palaszczuk Government introduced a whole host of measures keeping tenants in place for longer,” Ms Mercorella said.
“We have seen people moving back to Brisbane and interstate people moving into Queensland, so all of these factors have contributed.”
Biggest change in regional areas
Ms Mercorella said while there had been a “tightening” of the rental market in Greater Brisbane, which includes Ipswich, Springfield and the Moreton Bay region, the biggest changes to rental vacancy rates were being seen in regional areas.
For example, in Mackay in north Queensland in December 2016, the vacancy rate sat at 7.9 per cent, but it now sits at 0.6 per cent.
It is a similar story in Rockhampton in central Queensland, where vacancy rates sat at 8.6 per cent in March 2017, but now sit at 0.3 per cent.
She said many people were considering co-tenanting with friends and family so they could afford a more expensive property.
Samantha Wild, 21, had been looking for rental properties for her and her three-year-old son Ashton on and off for the past two years.