Rental agents on Cape Cod are seeing more vacancies and cancellations this season. This five-bedroom home in East Orleans is available this summer for $4,950 per week.

As the summer quickly approaches, Cape Cod agents are hoping that the lukewarm vacation rental market will heat up.

According to rental agents on Cape Cod, rentals are down this season compared to prior years, and inventory has grown, leaving a good number of rental properties vacant – even during prime weeks in July and August.

The harsh winter weather, job layoffs and the economic slump have done much to chip away at business, according to local agents. But with warmer days arriving, rental agents have been getting more phone calls from prospective tenants.

“I’ve remained optimistic. I keep telling agents in the office that [business is] going to come late,” said Diane Ablitt, rental manager of Cotton Real Estate in Osterville, which focuses on rentals on the mid-Cape. “We’ve had terrible weather, and that has so much to do with it.”

At Cotton Real Estate, where rental properties range from $1,200 a week to $50,000 a month, homes in the lower rental range were the first to be booked. There are few, if any, vacancies in that lower price range remaining this season, according to Ablitt.

However, there are homes available in most other price ranges, according to Ablitt, who said she is getting three to five calls nearly every day from homeowners who want to rent out their properties.

“Normally the listing calls come in the fall,” she said. “Owners know they have to have everything in place by the beginning of January.”

‘A Tough Year’

Typically, rental properties are pretty much booked by the end of March. With the inclement winter weather dragging on for months, however, summer vacation was far from people’s minds.

“People didn’t come down to look. They couldn’t get into places,” said Jan McDonough, a rental agent with Harwich Realty Co. in Harwich Port, explaining that snow wasn’t shoveled or plowed at some homes, making it difficult to show them to prospective tenants.

McDonough estimated that Harwich Realty’s rental bookings are off by about 20 percent this year. “We’ve had several cancellations due to people losing their jobs,” said McDonough.

According to a recent article in the Cape Cod Times, reservations for properties in July and August are down anywhere from 5 percent to 30 percent from last year.

With the economy sputtering, some people are skipping vacations, while property owners who never rented their homes are trying to find ways to make their property investments work for them.

“People that never had to rent before are trying to figure out how to beef up their economy as well,” said Judy Rozema, a rental agent with Capecodvacation.com, an affiliate of The Real Estate Co. in East Orleans.

Rozema, whose company has an inventory of about 400 rental homes, said renters have a lot of properties from which to choose, so they “can afford to be pickier.” From mid-July to mid-August, weeks that tend to be the busiest, many of Rozema’s rentals are booked, but homes are still available in June and late August.

Part of the slowdown is because schools are closing later this summer or opening in August instead of after Labor Day due to missed school days during the winter. “Winter played havoc with the snow days for the kids in school,” said Rozema. “The rental season is shrinking as well, so [owners] who would have rented 10 or 12 weeks, are now renting eight or nine weeks out of the season.”

Rozema said business has been steady – with regular visitors to the Web site and calls coming in – but “this year just seems to be a tough year in general.”

To adjust to the market, some owners are becoming more flexible with their rents and the length of time they will rent.

Ablitt said she has received calls in the last few days from owners who want to reduce rents between $500 to $600 “to entice people to rent.”

At Capecodvacation.com, Rozema said the owner of a five-bedroom home on the beach in East Orleans which typically rents for $5,500 a week is willing to be more flexible with the rent. The home is available during two weeks in mid-July because of recent cancellations.

Tenants are also starting to do their own negotiating – asking for a break in rent or for a change in the length of their rental agreements. Cotton Real Estate, for example, has many rental properties that can only be rented by month, and as a rule generally has a two-week rental minimum. But this year, some owners are agreeing to one-week rentals, said Ablitt.

Like Ablitt, McDonough expects more people to start calling in upcoming weeks as the temperature rises. McDonough said last year Harwich Realty handled 38 leases in May and 22 in June. “That’s a lot for that late in the season,” she said.

Aglaia Pikounis may be reached at apikounis@thewarrengroup.com.