Rent growth shows signs of a slowdown as renters and investors reassess
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Rent growth shows signs of a slowdown as renters and investors reassess

There are still strong yields to be had if you know what and where to buy

By KANEBRIDGE NEWS
Tue, Aug 29, 2023 9:55amGrey Clock 2 min

After strong yields in recent years, rent growth is set to slow across Australia next year, according to new data.

Research by property data and analytics provider CoreLogic shows after 35 consecutive increases in rent values to July this year, they have begun to slow in recent months.

The trend is most obvious in regional areas where rent values have been slowing since April last year and appear to have flattened out. In regional Tasmania, where data from 40 suburbs was analysed, rents have fallen by 47.5 percent. This was followed by regional NSW, where of the 353 suburbs analysed, 38.4 percent have recorded a decrease in rents. However, data shows the capitals have also been impacted, with more than 90 percent of Hobart suburbs recording a fall in rent over the past quarter, followed by Canberra at 88.9 percent. In Sydney’s suburbs, there’s a strong contrast between rent values for houses and apartments, with the former recording a fall of 19 percent, while apartment rent values fell just 6.9 percent.

CoreLogic Australia head of research Eliza Owen said there were several factors at play signalling that the trend would continue into 2024. A predicted decline in interest rates could encourage more investors into the market, leading to an increase in the rental supply and therefore lower rent growth. More first homebuyers might also be ready to enter the property market as confidence around the cash rate grows.

Slowing income growth, which was strong during the pandemic, could also lead some renters to reassess their decision to move into more spacious single households and back into more affordable share house options, freeing up more rental stock.

Apartments continue to represent the best yield compared with houses for investors, with significantly lower falls in rents in all Australian capitals, with the exception of Canberra and Hobart where they are in par with corresponding falls in rents for houses.



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Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.

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A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.

The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.

“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”

The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.

It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.

In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.

“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.

The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.

“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.

He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.

The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.

“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.

His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.

“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.

When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.

They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.

The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.

For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.

“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”

As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.

“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”

Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.

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