Hitting the headlines

It might seem as though on the one side there are the established owners of existing properties, who wish to hold on to them for the long term and generate revenue from profitable levels of rent. While on the other there are the discounters, who are more interested in trading properties and are willing to do anything to fill them with tenants in an attempt to make them appear more attractive to prospective investors. So to do this, the allegation goes, they have to provide hefty incentives, such as long rent-free periods, but they also have to maintain the illusion that the asset is a profitable one – and therefore the real, effective rents and the asset’s actual profitability are somehow hidden from investors by insisting on using the official and much higher headline rate. But is this a fair and accurate picture of what is actually going on at the moment? “The disparity between headline and effective rents varies between developers and between existing stock and new