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To furnish or not to furnish? Tenants are setting the agenda for landlords, says Ginetta Vedrickas

It may now be a tenant's market but a flexible landlord still needs to know what tenants prefer: the bare walls of an unfurnished property on which they can stamp their own personality, or the convenience of a ready furnished place where they simply have to unpack.

"It depends absolutely on your area," says Malcolm Harrison of the Association of Residential Lettings Agents: "I'd say that at the bottom end a tenant's preference is for furnished and at the top end they prefer unfurnished, but there are quirks. I was told by an agent in the Thames Valley that everyone there prefers furnished but they bring their own beds."

Does furnishing a property guarantee higher rents? "You must find out what is true for your area. There are no hard and fast rules," says Harrison who warns that furnishing a property will not necessarily produce higher yields but it might help you let: "If a tenant prefers that somewhere is furnished then it pays you to do it to ensure you have no void periods."

Vanessa Gabriel of Hamptons International, Rickmansworth, agrees: "We have a new development in the town centre and have quite a number of flats from there on our books which are all unfurnished. We had a Japanese man who wanted to take one of the flats but he wanted it furnished. The landlord agreed and it's now let for the winter at £1,100 per month."

Furnishing a flat may be costly but, thanks to what seems to be Britain's favourite Swedish import, it's now cheaper and easier than it once was, as Gabriel found with her Japanese tenant: "The landlord got out the Ikea catalogue, the tenant pointed to what he wanted and the landlord bought it. Landlords must be flexible," says Gabriel, who believes that this approach is vital in today's market.

Furnishing a rented property does not affect tenants' rights as it did before the 1988 Housing Act. "The well-intentioned rents acts of the Fifties and Sixties were a total disaster which did their best to kill the market. You ended up with sitting tenants paying £1 a week," says Harrison.

Things may now be different but are they improving? Kirstin Mavric of Winkworth in South Kensington believes that standards are slowly changing as younger, buy-to-let landlords enter the market but she says that the public's growing interest in interiors makes little difference: "You will always get old fashioned landlords who never dream of changing their furniture but you also get developers who constantly try to improve things."

Mavric finds that most landlords are more amenable to installing rather than removing existing furniture: "Storage in London is so expensive that it probably costs more to store than to buy it." American tenants frequently ask landlords to store furniture. "In the US all rented property is unfurnished and they don't know that here most property is furnished so they bring their stuff with them."

Costly storage charges may be unavoidable but avoiding the agonies of queuing in Ikea is now possible as investment flats that come with furniture and accessories including fax, hi-fi, phone and even pictures and plants come onto the market. Hurford, Salvi, Carr are selling 77 apartments at City Pavilion in Britton street EC1 that were fitted out by the Bank of Bahrain. The style is contemporary: "They are state-of-the-art and you can move straight in," says Stephen Hurford who is selling one-bedroom flats from £270,000 up to £760,000 for three bedrooms.

Buyers so far include buy-to-let landlords for whom Hurford sees advantages. "The fact that they are already furnished is a major attraction. In this area you get people who work in the city who have been sent here for a couple of years so they don't want to pack up the family home."

Tenants may temporarily cope without their own furniture but in today's market furnishing a flat with odds and ends, or sometimes even antiques, won't do. "It's no good putting Queen Anne in an ex-council flat, says Malcolm Harrison: "It simply won't go." Antiques may suit grander settings and they are also exempt from strict fire regulations governing furniture standards in rented homes.

John Socha of the Small Landlords Association warns that even furniture which complies with current fire regulations "must bear the labels which often get pulled off so there's no proof". Socha owns 16 rental properties in Northampton, which are all unfurnished. "I try to avoid it as you don't get extra money. Also when you do furnish you get people saying, 'Oh I don't like the colour of that suite.'"

Leon Barzankian owns a two-bedroomed flat in Courtfield Gardens SW5, which is currently being marketed through Winkworth South Kensington for £550 per week. He describes his own home as "minimalist" but has furnished his rental flat, which has high ceilings, differently: "Because of the flat's style I stick to conservative stuff." He has always preferred to let furnished property until recently: "It doesn't happen that often but the last tenants had a child and they wrecked the sofa which was quite expensive." He has replaced the sofa with a mid-priced one.

Kate Nichols of Winkworth Kentish town doesn't advise installing expensive furniture: "Get cheap and cheerful. We take six-week deposits but a landlord would be devastated if their £2,000 sofa was destroyed." Winkworth insist upon professional inventories so that any damage is spotted immediately, but while most tenants leave properties in the same, or sometimes in better, condition there are exceptions: "We had one let in which the entire place suffered a terrible trashing. It was absolutely awful and a mature couple with three grown-up children did it. Eventually the landlord sold the flat," says Nichols.

Winkworth, Kentish Town: 020-7485 9210.

Winkworth, South Kensington: 020-7370 6767.

ARLA: 01494 431 680.

Hamptons, Rickmansworth: 01923 896444.

Hurford Salvi Carr: 020-7566 9444.

Small Landlords Association: 0870 241 0471.

DTI free booklet: A Guide to Furniture & Furnishings (fire and safety regulations): 0870 150 2500.