ReRenting Rental #2 - The Market Was Suprisingly Strong

The 2nd rental house we have became vacant not too long ago. Not only was this the first time I needed to re-rent a house that was being rented, but we were overseas so we needed to orchestrate this remotely. I considered hiring a company to handle this for me, but I couldn't pull the trigger. Agencies typically ask for 1 month's rent as the fee to find a tenant - that is too steep for me at least at this point.

In the end my wife and I recruited a family member to handle the logistics for us. It worked pretty well for us, I was worried that we would run into problems, but our recruited help really helped us get everything done.

Renting the house ended up being easier than expected. We raised the rent 9% and had a very strong response when we put it on the market. However to be fair, I had rented it for below market last year because I was looking for low maintenance tenants, so raising the rent 9% still left the rent on the low end of comps in the area.

We had ~22 people inquire about the rental, 8 people did a walk-through, and 4 people applied. We end up accepting the 1st application we received.

The house was vacant a total of 8 days. Not bad considering we were relying on our family to assist with the logistics and waited to start showing the property until the last 3 days of the lease - so it took 11 days total to get someone in the house from the first showing of the property.

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Comments (4)

I didn't realize that management companies charged quite that much to get tenants in. Do they provide any services such as credit and background checks on the people they get into your house?

Posted by Matt | August 22, 2008 11:40 AM

I also have found the rental market to be very strong. I think it is because it is now harder for many people to buy a house so more people are renting. Also all those people who are foreclosed on need a place to live also. I have heard that rental occupancy rates are going way up all over the nation.

Jason Dragon
http://blog.capitalactive.com/

Posted by Jason Dragon | August 22, 2008 9:08 PM

Newbie to your site. Going through the basics of your site.
In your case is your rental income surpassing the cost of maintaining your place?
You have numerous rental places, does that cause you to lose your sleep at times?
Thanks
Tapan
inquisitiveaboutfinance.blogspot.com

Posted by Tapan | August 24, 2008 1:39 PM

Tapan, Thanks for reading. Yes rental income has exceeded rental expenses including PITI, maintenance, rerent exp, etc. The only hestitaion is I do most of the work myself, so if I took out a pay rate for myself/wife, we would probably/could be losing money on a cash flow basis.

Posted by 2million | August 24, 2008 11:01 PM