For reasons too complicated to go into here, I bought a flat when house prices were at their peak …and don’t live in it any more. I’d rather not sell in the current climate, so I’ve decided to have a go at renting it out.

But if the buying and selling market was complicated, the rental market is really complicated. How much should I charge? Are rents going up or down?

I went looking for advice. Most experts agree that with fewer people able to buy, more are looking to rent. Yay, I thought. It’s a landlord’s market; I can charge the earth (well, okay – at least cover my mortgage).

Not so.

It’s true that people aren’t buying, but guess what – people aren’t selling either. So not only is there a surfeit of tenants, but everyone’s a landlord too. All sorts of properties are up for rent in my area – not just flats – and suddenly I don’t even know the competition any more. But none of my new “rivals” seem to know either – prices are all over the place and the average rent on a one bedroomed flat like mine, which used to be set in stone, is now really hard to gauge.

An article from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) confirms my doubts and compounds my uncertainty. Rics explains that the rental market is booming, but that in July of this year, “rental expectations fell slightly with some surveyors expecting over-supply to push rents downwards in the next quarter.”

So, I’ve come up with a figure that covers my mortgage and gives me a sensible contingency, but I’ve no idea if it’s going to work. With tenants and landlords both hedging their bets, it will be a while before the market becomes “readable”, at least in my area. Will my asset become a millstone? I’ll let you know…

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