Housing rents have notched up their slowest annual growth on record, but the new benchmark looks set to be lowered again before long.
Rents stalled altogether in November, cutting annual growth in Australia's capital cities to an average of just 0.3 per cent, according to the CoreLogic RP Data rental review snapshot released on Thursday.
A building boom driven by investor activity, along with slower population growth, were identified as the reasons for the slowdown.
And it's not over.
"We envisage that growth in rental rates is likely to slow even further over the coming months, with a possibility that rental rates will start to fall on an annual basis over the coming months," the report said.
The CoreLogic RP Data figures begin in the mid-1990s, but Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates, which extend back to 1972, show the slowest pace of rental growth before this was 0.4 per cent, in recession-affected 1993.
The national average is also being depressed by the end of the mining investment boom, which pushed rents down over the past year by 7.4 per cent in Perth and by 13.5 per cent in Darwin.
But rent growth was slow in other capitals, even Melbourne, where rents rose 2.1 per cent and Sydney, where they rose by 2.0 per cent.
Canberra was next with a 1.1 per cent gain over the year and was the only city where annual rental growth was faster than a year ago,
There were marginal annual rises of 0.3 per cent in Hobart and 0.2 per cent in Adelaide, while Brisbane recorded a fall of 0.3 per cent.
Although rents had continued to rise in the big two centres the growth rate was slowing for both, according to CoreLogic RP Data research analyst Cameron Kusher.
"It is clear that the increase in investment stock continues to provide landlords with little scope to lift rental rates while the low mortgage rate environment provides little incentive to push yields higher."