Tooele’s notoriously tight rental market may be easing slightly, with apartments a bit easier to find and rents edging downward amid a prolonged real estate slowdown.

Though demand for rentals still outweighs supply overall, according to local real estate agents, some segments of the market such as higher-end homes for rent are softening.

“Tooele has always been short on rental units,” said Sandy Critchlow, an agent with Prudential Real Estate in Tooele who manages several rental properties around town. “That is largely due to a lack of apartments. You can go in to Salt Lake and find all kinds of apartments in that affordable range, but not here in Tooele.”

Homes renting in the range of $1,100 to $1,300 are available and they rent quickly, according to Critchlow.

“There are people that are only here temporarily that are looking for a nice rental and they pick up those upper end rentals quickly,” Critchlow said.

Units renting between $650 and $850 is where housing is short in Tooele, Critchlow said.

“And I see the demand for that affordable range increasing,” said Critchlow. “As people lose jobs or suffer cutbacks in hours at work, they either leave their home and move back in with mom and dad or they scale down to a lower-price rental.”

Geraldine King was forced to find a rental when her trailer in Henwood Mobile park burned down last week. King’s daughter and two grandchildren — a boy, 18, and a girl, 16 — live with her and share expenses.

“It was hard to find a place that we could afford. There were not too many places that we could see,” King said. “I am on a fixed income and most places I could afford were just two bedrooms, which would not work for us because the children need their own bedrooms for us to qualify for assistance. Larger places were just more than I could afford on my own.”

Jack Walters, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker, sees more families living under one roof in order to make payments.

“More and more, we are seeing multiple families under one roof trying to make payments,” Walters said. “The rental market may be a little looser than it was a year ago, but not by much. We have not seen a significant number of new rentals units come on the market while, due to the economy, the demand for rentals persists.”

Walters owns 40 rental units — one eightplex and the rest fourplexes.

“I have four units empty right now,” Walters said. “It may take me two months to fill them, but that is because I take my time and screen potential renters and look for the best tenants. I also recently started renting to roommates. I used to not allow roommates, but in today’s economy the only way some people can afford to move out of their parents’ home is by sharing expenses with a roommate.”

Walters said he has dropped the price on some of his units by up to 3 percent because people just don’t have the money and he needs to stay competitive.

Critchlow said collecting rents has become more difficult over the last few years. She has allowed some renters to pay bi-weekly instead of monthly, and in some cases has allowed a 5 percent reduction in rent for tenants with a good track record of paying on time.

She believes an influx of government workers heading to Dugway has kept up demand for rentals in Tooele.

“These people coming into Dugway need a place to live, but they have not sold their old home where they came from yet,” Critchlow said. “So they rent until they sell their old home.”

Lana McKean, real estate agent with Davidson Realty in Tooele, manages 150 rental units and said all but two are currently occupied.

“Normally rental unit prices follow interest rates — as interest rates go up so does the price,” she said. “But in this economy nobody can afford to pay more for rentals, so the price has stayed down.”

McKean agrees that more affordable rentals are needed in Tooele.

“We have very little in that lower range for the young family or people that may be struggling,” McKean said. “More apartments would help fill that affordable range for lower-income families.”

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com