You can reduce it so much but tenants have to shoulder the burden of this recession too.
Murphaph - i disagree with this statement.
Given that you are a landlord this appears to be a very subjective comment rather than objective.
You say a landlord should only reduce it 'so much'.
This strikes me as a notional value.
How is this notional value determined ?
The free market determines rental prices. Nothing else.
The rental market is a free market - driven by supply and demand.
This whole notion of we must all chip in to shoulder the recession with respect to rental prices is naive.
Tenants are quite rightly asking for rent reductions.
If landlords have to sell then so be it. That is the nature of a free market.
And if this in turn affects property prices then so be it also. This is also a free market.
Property prices should not be artificially supported - and least of all by tenants on behalf of landlords which is the inference of your statement !!
I really am unsure what you are suiggesting?
Are you also suggesting that when landlords were making a lot of money in the boom years through capital appreciaion that they should have capped rental prices ?
i.e. when times are bad for tenants you think they should help the landlord by shouldering some of the loss. So therefore are you suggesting the opposite should apply when times are good?
So should the landlord not increease it appropriately when times are good in return? DId that happen in the past?
I think not.
And i am a landord also by the way.
You seem to have inconsistincies in your argumenmt. It doesn't make sense.
It's all about how the cookie crumbles.
Right now the cookie is crumbling in favouir of tenants as demand is not as strong as it was and therefore rents naturally fall. That's the inherent nature of a free market - a market that no one forced you to partake in.
There are losers and winners in every recession.
This whole shouldering-it-together attitude does not apply in this instance.
You made your bed - you have to lie in it !
I think you have to dip your toe in the real world murphaph.