Brisbane real estate agent’s email draws praise for telling landlords not to overprice rentals

A real estate agent has criticized her landlord clients for raising the rent too high, and stunned tenants welcome the “brutal truth” of her comments.

Ping Han of Place Sunnybank in Macgregor, in south Brisbane, sent a timely newsletter to the owners, which was posted on social media this week.

Ms. Han said landlords need to consider the plight of renters and not overprice their investment properties amid exceptionally low vacancy rates in the city.

He added that some landlords may have missed the point about affordability for their renters amid the turmoil facing renters.

“This is what most homeowners don’t like to hear, but most of the time it’s also the brutal truth,” Ms. Han said.

The bold comments come as SQM Research found that Brisbane’s vacancy rates dropped to 0.8 per cent last January.

The numbers have fallen sharply since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, while the city’s rental prices have also risen 24.8 percent in the past 12 months through January of this year.

The real estate director said in the letter that she has seen renters spend an extra $150 per week on properties she manages, compared to last year.

“However, the wages of the tenants have not increased as much, with the prices of groceries also going up, many good families of tenants have gone through a real struggle,” Ms. Han said.

“If you have a property online for rent and you’ve been waiting for weeks and there’s not a good application, chances are it’s overpriced,” he added.

Ms. Han said Yahoo News Australia he felt the ‘conflict of interest’ between helping his clients and protecting tenants.

“We have to do everything in the best interest of the client, who is the owner, but we have a duty to care for the tenants,” he said.

‘You have to be fair and landlords have to be careful that poor tenants have reached capacity. It’s very, very difficult for them, and we’re seeing an increase in vacancies because of that.’

The co-owner of the real estate branch also said her company has seen an alarming trend of breaking leases in January as tenants cannot withstand the pressure of rising rents.

“We experienced the highest number of temporary leases in January 2023 compared to previous years,” he said.

“Most tenants reported that with the current high rent they can no longer afford it in the long term.”

Instead, renters have been looking for their own property further out of town “so they have an asset that belongs to them,” he said.

The realtor against said it had had six to 10 leases over a period of two to three weeks, which was “very unusual.”

“A lot of tenants say we’d love to stay here and we’ve been with you for years, but we can’t accept the rent, it’s out of our capacity,” Ms. Han said.

His comments were well received by jaded renters on social media this week.

‘TO [real estate] newsletter informing landlords that their rent may be too high. Now I just need the rest to follow,” one post read.

‘I may have to find a new place in a couple of months. This agency will be the first one I look at,’ said one tenant.

“This is not what I expected to see from a real estate company,” wrote another.

“I was hoping for something more like ‘make sure your tenants have two kidneys, so they can sell one when you raise rent by $150 a week.'”

“They would want to be careful, they will get kicked out of the real estate association for not being freeloaders,” warned one commenter.

“You know times are tough when property managers tell you the rent is too high,” said another.

Meanwhile, SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher said he has never seen such a large increase in rents with this current generation in the last year in Brisbane.

“The last time we had increases like 24.8 per cent in Brisbane, or indeed the whole country, was in the 1970s,” he said. Realestate.com.au last month.

‘This is rampant inflation of rental prices that has not yet been taken into account by ABS [Australian Bureau of Statistics] in its series of CPI rental indices.’

Sky-high rents and a lack of rental properties have plagued the country in the past 12 months.

Nationwide, rents rose 6.7 percent to an average of $495 a week in 2022, but the problem was far worse in capital cities.

In cities like Melbourne and Sydney, increased post-Covid demand for fewer properties saw unit rents rise 9.3%, while houses rose 8.3%.