It's Official - Rents in London ARE On the Decline!

Posted on 2009/01/25 20:06:26 (January 2009).

[Wednesday 21st January]
Chie went to her yoga class from 7 to 8 again, which, like last week, meant I could leave the office at a respectable time (e.g. 7ish) and still have a meal ready for her by the time she got back. I made a vegetarian shepherd's pie. So maybe that's more like a cottage pie (I have a vague memory of musing over this on an earlier blog post).

Also today we finally heard back from the management company for our apartment - our contract is nearly at and end, and they originally wanted to increase the rent "in line with market conditions". I'd phoned up a while back and told them they were living in some kind of fantasy world, and we wouldn't even consider renewing if they put the rent up, and in fact given what had happened to rents in the area they should be reducing it.

To my slight surprise they actually agreed to the lowered rent that I'd suggested, but, of course, there was a catch - they wanted us to agree to a fixed 12 month contract (rather than the previous contract which had an 8 month break clause). This was a bit frustrating really, had it gone any other way I'd have immediately known what to do - if they'd refused to lower the rent I'd already resolved to move out. If they'd lowered it without any caveats I'd resolved to stay. So I'm now left in a quagmire of indecision again.

Oh well, on the plus side it was gratifying for someone in that industry to admit that rents are actually on the decline in London.

Well 12 months is a reasonable time and could give you a good time span to look for other options/buy a place...

Posted by Lox at 2009/01/26 07:13:37.

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