As I said in my last blog, I am a bit of an optimist myself so I am going to start this series off by looking at some of the good news that abounds about the property sector and where it is heading.
There have been a lot of positive murmurs coming from the buy to let sector over the last month or so and we should be encouraged by this. One thing that I’ve learned from economics 101, is that positivity breeds positivity.
According to property portal findaproperty.com, things improved dramatically for long term landlords in September and October when ‘accidental landlords’ finally decided it was time to sell up and the stock of available rental property dropped by ten percent. This clearing of the glut of properties up for rent allowed a lot of landlords to return to the fair asking price they had been forced to drop because of the oversupply of housing. There is no denying this is excellent news for landlords, not to mention the relief for the ‘accidental landlords’ who had no desire to be involved in the rental market in the first place.
Average rent also rose in the month of October, not by a lot but any rise is a step in the right direction. Further good news is that it rose for the sixth consecutive month, giving out strong signals that things may be beginning to stabilise in the market.
Finally, for this section, the average time that a property sits vacant has fallen. Properties are now rented in an average of 58 days. We all know that less vacant properties is excellent news for landlords.
There is further good news in the area of rental returns but I will cover that in the next blog.
