28/09/2009 - Rental house demand 'stabilising'
An increase in demand for rental homes has begun to stabilise the letting market's oversupply of properties, research suggests.
As demand for homes to buy had shrunk, owners who were unable to sell flooded the market with properties for rent.
But figures from the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) showed that a third of agents believed supply and demand was balanced in the period from July to September this year, an increase from 19% from the same issues in April to the end of June.
Similarly, while 70% of people had thought that there were more properties available for rent than there were tenants in the second quarter of 2009, just 43% felt that was true in the third quarter while 24% said that demand had outstripped supply.
The number of agents who had signed 10 or more tenancies in the quarter was also up by 4%, while each agent had arranged an average of 36 new tenancies - up from 32.6.
The research also reported a drop in the average time a property is empty for between tenants, with this decreasing from 4.3 weeks in May to four weeks in August.
Copyright © Press Association 2009
Related links
|
