As reports of mortgage lending hitting a new low in August filter through, it appears that landlords are benefiting from the situation as void periods drop to the lowest for eight years.
A survey by the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) on its members revealed that void rental periods had dropped on average from 3.6 weeks to 3.2 over the last quarter. Further good news was that the decreases applied to every area of the country, with the Midlands showing the steepest fall with voids there dropping from 4.2 to 3.5 in the period concerned.
As usual London landlords seem to be faring very well with average void periods now down to 2.8 weeks, whereas landlords in Scotland and Wales have the highest void periods although this is still only 3.7. The drop is the fourth quarter in a row where voids have fallen and signifies just how strong the residential letting market is, which prompted Ian Potter, the Operations Manager at ARLA, to say “The rental market is incredibly strong at the moment for those working within the industry but for those consumers who are relying on the Private Rental Sector for housing, the cost of renting must be of concern. The new government must ensure that finance is made available to the sector, so that more properties can be brought into the PRS and ensure that more rental homes are made available.”
The fall in void periods to its lowest in eight years illustrates how fickle the market can be, for in the opening months of 2009 voids were at their highest. With this in mind landlords should always safeguard their portfolio as much as possible, and one way to do this is to look around for cheap landlord insurance