Telling Signs in the Rental Market
Last night was a great night meeting with other investors and talking about issues that are affecting them, their properties, tenants, and profitability. Mark and I met with about 20 investors last night and talked about a wide variety of topics – here are some highlights:
GWINNETT COUNTY GARBAGE DEBACLE- Some of you may know that Gwinnett county tried to implement a county mandated garbage solution in effect billing the property owners at a higher rate than what most people are paying now and demanding recycling. The issue comes into play as to how to transition the tenants from paying the garbage providers over to the landlord. This effects the leases as well as keeping track of an additional line item. We will see how this plays out over time.
HIGHER VACANCY RATES – Most of the investors are seeing a lengthening gap in vacancies. We believe the increased competition is due to the housing crunch and less construction workers here needed work. We will continue to monitor the vacancy rates for our owners and determine how we can best resolve our owners vacancies. Older homes, Condos & townhomes are much slower to rent. New homes (1995 and younger) are still renting when in great condition and price appropriately.
SEC 8 – We talked more about the issues in Dekalb County and the lawn maintenance. We talked about tenants that wanted to “pay the difference” and how that could land them in Federal Prison for fraud. We talked about how the voucher amounts are established and how some landlords were getting into trouble by not properly screening Sec 8 tenants like all others.
INVESTORS DEFAULTING – We discussed the problem with owners not paying the mortgages and how this was affecting tenants. We also discussed the new Fannie Mae guidelines about allowing the tenants to stay month to month and the ramifications of that positive and negative. We will be calling on some of the banks to discuss how we as a property management company can assist them in this process.
There were a lot of other topics that were discussed as well, but these were the highlights. If you are interested in working with us either as a tenant or owner – visit our website at www.SolidSourcePM.com for further information we service the North Metro Atlanta Area.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:19 am
I HAVE SOMEONE INTERESTED IN RENTING AHOUSE YOU HAVE LISTED.