[quote=Ren]
I’ve been watching Murrieta and Temecula rents on CL for two years, and they are definitely dropping.
When I was looking on CL for a new place to rent myself last year, the owners I dealt with were all posting their actual asking rents, then choosing the renters based on job history and whether they “liked” them (and not so much on credit, since they were getting a lot of people with foreclosures).
[/quote]
I concur with the findings. However, I would caution the use of “rental bubble”. I don’t see that we have a rental bubble here in Temecula, instead I see the current rental price as the depressed price.
Reason? According to the Husing Report, in 2003 (I couldn’t find an earlier report), the average monthly apartment rental rate was $986. As for last year this time, it was $1176. So the yearly increase is about 3.6%. This is almost inline with inflation, which is also roughly inline with the local wage increase.
So the rents may be a little bit higher than they should be but it was definitely not in the bubble state.