You are dreaming, prices are driven by consumer confidence and ability to pay and neither of those criteria apply at the moment.
Any landlord that increase rents in poor economic times is a short sited fool, chase a good tenant away for the sake of a few extra dollars which could and probably will be lost a number of time over by renting fees and bad tenant costs
If you have bad tenants by all means increase the rents but they should have been moved on anyway
As to vacancy rates, in my area they have gone out slightly and they are a bit cheaper also
