The normal relationship is illustrated by the national Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence in the CPI which accelerates whenever house prices are under pressure for the obvious reasons that many choose to rent because they decide to wait to see what happens with house prices.

What you report rather flies in the face of this: ie a deceleration in rental growth whilst the OC real estate situation worsens. If true, there may be other local factors over-riding. For example the employment situation may have worsened significantly in the last year enough to outweigh the normal pattern; but I doubt it.

But frankly rental is a poorly researched subject everywhere because big business is not involved or interested, it is not a major cog in economic models and the data sources are poor.

It is one of those few areas in which an individual amateur analyst could make a big impact.