A report from the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. "The accommodation apocalypse that hit short-stay Airbnb apartment owners and operators in Sydney and Melbourne is leading to an oversupply of long-term rentals, sharply driving down rents. The sudden halt to international and local travel in March is flooding key inner Sydney and Melbourne markets with an extra 1000 former Airbnb and short-stay apartments a week. Melbourne’s waterside apartment haven, Docklands, is seeing a similar deluge."

"'It’s totally unprecedented,' said Glenn Donnelly, managing director at City Residential. 'There is an oversupply. The only way we can rent them out at the moment is to reduce the weekly rent.' Mr Donnelly said about 30 per cent of City Residential’s rent roll is vacant. 'We’ve never had that in sixteen years of business.'"

"Short-term rentals are suffering a 'huge correction,' said Trish Burt, whose group Neighbours Not Strangers campaigns against Airbnb in residential apartments. 'I'd say they’re in huge pain. There are some city buildings where more than a third of the apartments are vacant. Airbnb’s business in city buildings has pretty much stopped.'"

"Docklands resident and spokesman for We Live Here, Marshall Delves, said: 'We're happy to see the end of them. They are facing an apocalypse. It’s given us back our homes and amenity and saved us a lot of wear and tear on our buildings. It’s been a godsend for people living in residential buildings.'"

"Edwin Almeida, director of Sydney-based Ribbon Property Consultants, said in some Sydney suburbs rents are down from $650 to $500. 'They’ve dropped a good 25 per cent and tenants can negotiate,' he said."

From Domain News. "The number of empty properties in the CBDs of Australia’s three biggest cities has blown out, with new figures recording the largest monthly increase of the national vacancy rate in more than a decade. Australia’s rental market has been flooded with vacant properties as part of the COVID-19 pandemic, with new data from SQM Research revealing more than 88,000 homes were left empty last month."

"'It’s an outright tenants’ market,' said SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher. 'Rents have been falling and they’re likely to continue to fall for the foreseeable future. It is happy days for tenants and a bit of disastrous scenario for landlords.'"

"Holiday hotspots and CBD locations have been hardest hit. The vacancy rate in the Sydney CBD more than doubled from 5.7 per cent in March to 13.8 per cent in April – a record high on the SQM series – with the Brisbane CBD close behind with an increase from 5.7 to 11.3 per cent. Melbourne’s CBD fared better with the vacancy rate increasing 2.6 percentage points to 7.6 per cent, however in Southbank the vacancy rate jumped from 5 per cent to a whopping 13 per cent."

"Mr Christopher expected the national vacancy rate to remain high until international borders reopened and warned it could push higher still, as new apartment supply hit the market at a time of reduced migration and local demand as households consolidated due to economic uncertainty. 'We’re completing 170,000 dwellings this year, whereas real demand is going to be for somewhere along the lines of 90,000 to 100,000 properties,' he said."

The Daily Telegraph."Landlords in some of Sydney’s most sought after inner suburbs have been offering apartments with hundreds of dollars slashed off the weekly rents as COVID-19 evaporates the tenant pool. New research showed average advertised rents are currently more than 10 per cent cheaper than they were a year ago in Pyrmont, Potts Point, Chippendale-Darlington and Bondi Junction. There was a similar trend in the Sydney CBD, where units were being listed for 14 per cent cheaper than a year ago, on average."

"But the new vacancies were heavily concentrated in high density areas, including the Sydney CBD, where 13.8 per cent, or nearly one in seven, rental homes were empty. SQM Research analyst Louis Christopher said landlords were competing for fewer tenants and rents could plummet further if more rentals emptied out. Properties rented out on short-term rental sites were also being converted to long-term rentals, increasing the supply of available housing, he said. This was evident in the popular holiday rental suburb of Palm Beach, where about 16.1 per cent of rental housing was vacant."

"Real Estate Institute of NSW chief executive Tim McKibbin said landlords were facing additional strain from the NSW government’s moratorium on rental evictions. Bank offers to defer mortgage repayments, often termed 'mortgage holidays,' would not solve the issue for landlords as they would have to pay increased interest down the line, Mr McKibbin said."

"Continued rises in vacancies would have a devastating impact on the economy, according to Mr Christopher. There would be sharp falls in building approvals, which would increase the risk of a 'major depression in our residential construction sector' and create 'rather obvious risks for housing prices,' he said."