Are House Rental prices dropping?

piggeh

Just wondering really, because looking around recently and I cant see any real reduction in rental prices for several areas I've been looking at. People still expecting quite substantial rents for one bedroom places throughout the SE.

Now I do not know the economics and obviously the current interest rates are a short term benefit for anyone on an SVR. But are rentals expected to drop with 'recessional pressures' and house prices dropping or will they stay releatively consistent?

MX5huggy

BBC is reporting that they are:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7910329.stm

beingjdc

Definitely falling in much of South-East and East London, dunno about the wider South-East.

elaina79

They seems to be up here in yorkshire so I would assume that they would down there as well. I'm just waiting for my landlord to tell me mine is going down......he he he

PasturesNew

You say 1-beds don't seem to be dropping. I am in a studio and would love to upgrade (a bath and a freezer would be nice), but it seems prices at the bottom end of the market aren't moving down yet.

It's more 2-4 bed places that are dropping to compete with each other at the moment it seems.

By the way, Property Bee tracks rentals too.

IveSeenTheLight

My 2 bed and 4 bed BTL are both up in rental since Jan 2007.
Only 3.23 days per year per property void as well.
Some areas have not dropped and kept their rental at the peak rate

Wookster

I would say definitely. Our lease comes up for renewal in March and we'll be looking at extracting some sort of reduction.

stevetodd

I think only certain areas of the rental market have fallen i.e. the top of the market rentals, areas where a large number of unsold flats have been reluctantly added to the rental market etc. The market I rent in, to youngish professionals in London doesn't seem to have been effected (at least yet).

TJ27

Where I am I don't think there's a shadow of doubt that rental prices must be dropping. We have a huge oversupply of new flats, people are renting out their houses instead of selling and there are now far more university halls of residence than even before.

I don't know that rents themselves are much less but there are definitely a lot more voids.

I also don't know if empty rental houses count as a zero for the purpose of compiling the average figures or if they are just taken out of the equation?? My guess is that if voids were taken into consideration then the averages would be far lower.

chucky

Wookster wrote: »

I would say definitely. Our lease comes up for renewal in March and we'll be looking at extracting some sort of reduction.

You're going to be out of a job, so of course you'll be looking for a reduction.

If you want to rent your property quickly, rents have fallen in Central London to around late 2006 and early 2007 prices. There are many landlords who are not reducing prices to avoid long void periods - I expect they will have 3 month voids until the perfect tenant comes along.

I've reduced a property from the asking price by 7.5% and it only had a 2 week void period. The agreed rental was what the property was being let out for in early 2007.

TJ27

I know several houses in typical student areas which have failed to attract tenants and have been empty for a whole academic year.