..."We are skating on the edge of a recession, but we are not in a recession," said Delores Conway, director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast at the University of Southern California. Expectations for a continuation of astronomical rent increases that Southern California apartment owners have come to expect are going to have to be tempered, she said.
The prices on houses doubled in the past four years and rents increased by 40 percent to 50 percent over the same time period, Conway said. But apartment owners can't expect more of the same for 2008 when rents are expected to rise by 3.2 percent in Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire and Orange County.
Average asking rents and occupancy rates in Southern California's apartment markets will tend to stabilize while the economy slows, Conway said. Rents are expected to rise slowly, with many households still preferring to rent due to tighter credit and the downward pressure on home prices, she said...