Faced with poor demand for residential properties, some landlords have come out with new offers to woo customers. If advertisements in newspapers and some community websites are any indication, some landlords are offering attractive discounts on rents on the condition that the tenants pay the full rent for one year in advance. Some others are luring tenants with announcements that they will be exempted from paying rent for the first one or two months of the contract period. In some cases, two-bedroom flats that were priced at QR6, 000 are now being offered at QR4, 500, provided one year’s rent is paid in advance. However, it is not clear whether there are any takers for such offers. “This trend was there when the rents started shooting up in the country. At that time, people were willing to accept such offers fearing a further increase in the rents. Now the situation is just the opposite, as rents continue to fall. The landlords will find it tough to win customers with such offers at this moment,” an official of a leading real estate agency told this newspaper yesterday. He said currently there was an oversupply of residential properties in the market, which might be forcing some landlords to come out with such offers. He cautioned that while accepting such offers it was important to check whether the offer was made by the landlord directly or by the real estate brokers. “There were incidents in the past where some fraudulent agents took huge sums of money from customers through such offers and fled the country. The tenants should make sure there are solid documents to prove their case in court, in case a dispute arises,” he added. Meanwhile, real estate agents are expecting a further fall in house rents during the summer holidays, as more families are expected to leave the country. “So far, we have not seen a noticeable increase in the number of clients vacating their houses. If at all there is a massive exodus of families, the landlords would be forced to reduce the rents for the simple reason that they can not leave their properties vacant for long,” said an agent. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=March2009&file=Local_News2009031362753.xml

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