'Tenants still want to rent flats in city'

by James Edgar, The Yorkshire Evening Post

A LEADING Leeds city centre property agent has slammed an industry survey that said tenants’ demand for flats has slumped.

The report by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said this was “due to a glut of properties on the market.”

According to the study, surveyors reported demand for flats in the latter part of 2007 slowed down dramatically compared to the first half of the year. It found only one in five of surveyors saw a rise in demand in the third quarter, compared with 37 per cent in the second.

But Jonathan Morgan, managing director of Morgans estate agents, said it was not the case in the city.

He said: “We expect our figures for December to be far better than last year. “We’ve had our best year for rentals in 10 years.”

Mr Morgan said his own quarterly lettings statistics for city centre properties prove substantial and continual growth on the corresponding periods the previous year.

Compared with 2006, the signed tenancy agreements in the first quarter of 2007 saw no change, the second quarter an 11 per cent increase, the third 21 per cent higher and the fourth saw 29 per cent growth, he added.

Mr Morgan said: “This clearly contradicts the RICS figures.”The RICS study also concluded the buy-to-let market has taken a nose-dive.

RICS spokesman Jeremy Leaf said: “A combination of tightening lending criteria and successive interest rate rises has started to hit the buy-to-let market.”

Mr Morgan agreed the statistics reflect anecdotal evidence on a national level, but he said they do not relate to his specialist area of the city centre market.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/39Tenants-still-want-to-rent.3635260.jp