My lease expires next month and I’ve been looking. Since I have a 12-month lease, I was looking at this time last year too.

I did notice that last summer rents were higher than when I renewed in February. Thus, this does seem to be a seasonably soft time of year. However, there seem to be a lot more vacancies now than there were last year at this time and rents are definitely cheaper. My guesstimate is that rents are off between 5% and 10% as compared to this time last year.

It’s hard to say if this trend will continue into the summer. The recession/depression may overwhelm the seasonality and rents could continue to go down from here. I’d like to see that happen, but I’m not holding my breath.