From MortgageDailyNews
"For two days in a row the news about housing has looked at least a little bit hopeful. On Monday the national real estate firm REMAX announced an increase of 6.5 percent in the sales of existing homes in December and Tuesday the National Association of Realtors® reported that pending sales were up 6.3 percent that month.
So perhaps home prices and interest rates have both fallen to the point that we will, when nice weather arrives, see a flood of potential homebuyers into the market - or maybe December just represented a fluky blip.
But there is another measure of what may be going on in the housing market; the number of rental vacancies.
A few weeks ago an acquaintance reported that the small mid-range apartment complex he lives in seemed unusually quiet; the parking lot very empty. He inquired of the super who told him that they had hit a staggering 75 percent vacancy rate. One after one the tenants, some of them long term had bought houses in the area. The gossip was, the super said, that his place wasn't alone. The big luxury complexes in town were so heavily hit that several were reported to have lowered rents.
Anecdotal information to be sure, but there is evidence that this is going on all over the country.
Business Week recently paired with Axiometrics.com, a Dallas apartment data company to gauge the state of the rental market. They came up with a list of 25 metro areas where not only are vacancy rates growing, but rents are falling.
Top on their list is Salt Lake City, Utah where the vacancy rate in the fourth quarter soared from 3.1 percent a year earlier to 6.8 percent, rents dropped and effective 5.7 percent over the year (an actual decline of 2.3 percent following an increase of 3.3 percent in 2007.) Landlords are reported to be offering over two weeks free rent on average."
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