Living room; David Alexander finds unfurnished property isn't popular

YOU would think that in Scotland, of all places, unfurnished property to rent would be in big demand. After all, a large chunk of the population over the age of 35 probably spent their formative years in a house that their parents rented, unfurnished, from their local council.

Nowadays, of course, most young people are brought up in an owner- occupied environment. However, just as the popularity of public rented housing has fallen over the past two decades, demand for unfurnished accommodation in an otherwise expanding private rental market has never really taken off.

There was a short period, during the height of the recession in the 1990s, when it was believed that the British public would take to renting unfurnished properties on a long-term basis, in the manner of our continental cousins. This was set against a background of double- figure mortgage rates and static property prices. In comparison to buying a house, letting began to look appealing because there were no set-up costs, rents were cheaper than mortgages and tenants could move home with a minimum of fuss.

This all changed as soon as interest rates started to fall and the capital value of residential property began to grow again - all of a sudden renting, as a direct alternative to owner-occupation, did not look nearly so attractive.

Currently just 2.5% of our business applies to unfurnished lettings. While there are a handful of executive houses and flats that are offered unfurnished, these are special cases usually owing to owners' personal circumstances.

In conventional lettings, most tenants find furnished accommodation more convenient. Even those tenants who are between homes tend to have their furniture in storage and so do not regard furnishing a rented flat for a period possibly as short as six months to be worth the hassle.

For their part, landlords are put off by the fact that an unfurnished house is subject to much more wear and tear than a furnished one. This may seem strange at first, but think about your own home and how much the need for redecoration would become apparent once you started taking pictures and hooks off walls or moving out sofas, bookcases and beds.

So it looks as if, for the foreseeable future, unfurnished properties will comprise a tiny minority of the private rented market. But then again, who knows what the future holds?

David Alexander is proprietor of letting agency, DJ Alexander

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