|
| Wednesday, June 14, 2006 |
| Rents Increasing? |
I recently found out my investment condo tenant is not planning on renewing the lease for another year. That means I will soon need to start advertising and interviewing prospective tenants. I must say this is my least favorite job as a landlord. But before I can place an ad for the unit, I need to figure out how much to ask for rent. While taxes have risen quite a bit, I have not raised the rent on that unit for years. Reading articles like this: A Cooling Housing Market Adds To Rental Demand in Many Cities and listening to reports such as this: Rising Rent Helping to Drive Inflation Higher has me seriously looking at my local rental market. I am thinking of raising my rent 5 or 10% - just as the NPR report mentioned is the average increase this year.
Boston has a funny rental cycle. The majority of leases in this city run for one year and begin Sept. 1. So most folks looking to rent in Boston are starting to look now and generally hope to have a signed lease in hand by end of June or end of July (depends if current landlord requires 60 days or 30 days notice of move-out). By the time August rolls around the tenant's looking are getting desperate and the landlords with available units are feeling the pressure to get the deal done or else risk losing out on the peak season.
This causes a funny little dance to take place where the prospective tenant who is looking for the best rental deal possible tries to figure out how many people are interested in the unit and if they have time to continue looking without risking losing out on the place. At the same time the prospective landlord is trying to figure out if this prospective tenant is really interested in the unit, or if this is just a "back-up" option if something else on their list falls-through. All of this means you have to juggle multiple prospects while making each feel that they are the best canidate while you work on checking references, pulling credit reports and weeding out and narrowing down your list of prospects (while trying not to lose too many of them to other landlords).
Of course you could just use a rental agent to do all this work for you, but from past experience I have found it best to do my own screening. It is a lot of work, but generally the time I put in now to find the right tenant will pay off during the rest of the year. Rent checks tend to arrive ontime and predictably when the tenant knows the landlord personally. |
| posted by Boston Gal @ 11:05 AM *
* Subscribe to Boston Gal's Open Wallet |
Links to this post:
|
| 5 Comments: |
-
boston.craigslist.org is a good place to list and its free. you could also use your blog as free advertising also.
-
This is why, of all the ways I imagine I might possibly become wealthy, becoming a landlord is NOT one of those ways.
Nonetheless, Good luck / Buena Suerte!!!
-
Yeah I don't want to be a landlord either, not at least until I am very wealthy and can diversify across a lot of units....
Anyway... rents are rising. The major factor behind the pickup in inflation is not oil prices, but rents.
-
Not related to your post, but amazon now sells groceries. Their shipping policy is the same as normal goods, but, they only sell things in bulk.
-
My landlord used a rental broker to show properties - this I guess is a good thing for him because he's the sort of guy who would point out the problems of a place along with its highlights. I found out later as well that he is usually too busy to show units because he is always the one to show up to do repairs even though he has a whole lot of units.
|
| |
| << Home |
| |
|
|
|
|
boston.craigslist.org is a good place to list and its free. you could also use your blog as free advertising also.