Expert urges wait-and-see approach to rental market recovery
News Category: Industry News
Published: 29-May-2009
This article was brought to you by Rentman the premium property management system
A leading property expert has described recent rental market statistics as "encouraging", but urged landlords to remain cautious about future industry developments.
FindaProperty's Rental Index revealed that average asking prices had stabilised in May for the first time since August 2008, which could be interpreted as a sign that the market is beginning a recovery.
However, Lisa Walker of property directory service fish4homes cautioned that the improvement could potentially be only a minor fluctuation.
She pointed to the figures given being for asking prices rather than achieved rents, as well as the fact that the average time rental properties remain vacant is still 16 days longer than last year's average.
Ms Walker said: "That would suggest to me that what we are actually seeing is a small variance rather than a full-blown upward trend."
However, she maintained any improvement is an encouraging sign and that the continuation of this trend over two or three months "would certainly indicate that the market may be turning".
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