Houses for rent on the Gold Coast at 2.7% vacancy rate

Houses for rent on the Gold Coast are becoming scarcer, with recent data showing vacancy rates for the area are sitting at 2.7 per cent.

That figure is for the three months to December, with Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ) data finding it's the third consecutive quarterly drop.

A balanced rental market is considered to have a vacancy rate of three per cent.

The data found that rental demand was maintained for the December quarter, despite a historical trend for a drop in activity as the holiday period approached.

REIQ chief executive Anton Kardash said that the demand has been fairly constant throughout 2012 and it doesn't seem it will abate.

He explained: "While sales in the property market did begin to improve in the second half of last year, the removal of the First Home Owners Grant in mid-October resulted in a large number of would-be homebuyers remaining in the rental market at the tail-end of last year."

That theory is based on Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data which discovered that there was a 33 per cent drop in first-home-buyers during October and November.

This may spur the interest for potential investors of Gold Coast property.

ABS data noted that there were 4,250 properties financed for investors in November last year – a 14.6 per cent jump from October.