Falling rents - landlords playing safe?

Identifying rental trends is difficult. As we have recently said you choose your information source and then make your mind up.

We've recently highlighted the figures from Rentindex which gives real time rental information and shows that rents have shown a dramatic fall in the last 6 months. The latest figures based on over 4000 AST rental agreements over the preceding 3 months have shown falls of over 3%. It's doesn't sound much but in a world where average rent changes nationally change by perhaps 2-3% per annum; it's significant.

I can only speak from recent personal experience. I had a tenant giving notice who luckily for me had a colleague wanting to rent my flat. Now if I'd put the flat on the market I would have been looking for a rent of between £350-375. As it was, the new tenant who was trading up from £275 pcm and was only able to afford £315. My dilemma.

Push for more rent but then have the additional marketing costs of employing a letting agent and even worse a potential rental void. The alternative was to accept less rent, get a tenant in pretty much straight away and then potentially increase the rent in line with the tenants rising income. I chose the latter.

I'm just wondering whether the recent rent falls reflect this pattern of behaviour from landlords across the sector. Are we prepared to accept less rent in return for keeping our properties let?

Landlord insurance