There's many factors that contribute to vacancy rates including population size, job-availability and many others. I note that Vancouver has an estimate 2020 population of 2.5m people in comparison to the 1.3m people my own city has. Further to that, Vancouver has an area of 115 square kilometres as opposed to the 3,258 square kilometres of Adelaide...land area often means more population spread and in smaller land areas more high rise (condominium-style) properties which are not popular here. That changes how people live and probably affects vacancy rate quite dramatically.
Adelaide city had a vacancy rate of 7.2% in September. That's a direct correlation to the fact Australian's don't really like apartment living, we have the option to have larger allotments, my own is more than 700sqm for instance. So, developers build apartment buildings, sell them to overseas investors, mainly Chinese, and they remain vacant for years.
In comparison, northern (suburban) Adelaide has a vacancy rate of 0.3 for September. This indicates more desirable properties and better weekly prices. Australian's aren't keen on living in small apartments so avoid them where possible, this skews the vacancy rate figures somewhat as developers put towers up that they sell, (which is their only interest) but then rarely actually tenant-up.
It's difficult to compare city to city, even here in Australia, Sydney is completely different to Adelaide for instance. It's impossible to compare country to country from a vacancy or rent value perspective.
Thanks for your comment. Informative.
Seems odd that my Prime Minister is so gung ho in taking in tens of thousands of Middle eastern and African refugees when I know there are young working families living here homeless and cant afford reasonable housing. We cant get enough affordable housing for our own.
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It's the same here, from those nations and others; Further to that they have created a working VISA called a 457 VISA which brings people here for work that could otherwise be given to Australian's. I think it could be done much better.