You bring up an interesting point. I wonder if the market gets segmented a bit with two kinds of landlords: The first is the desperate landlord whose property is sitting on the market because they don’t want to lower it to market price. I’m seeing a lot of this right now on craigslist. That person is desperate to pay the mortgage and is more interested in the bird in the hand (decent rent) than the risk of a poor credit tenant.
Then I think you have the other side-landlords who are very concerned about what happens to their house, or the risk of not getting paid. These folks wil likely be very wary of low credit customers and willing to rent for less to find a high quality tenant (I rent from one of these right now).
My hope is that this is how it plays out-so that rents on the responsible (e.g. the Piggington renter) don’t wind up escalating with a bunch of new renters chasing properties.
