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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Vosilla who wrote (42671)	10/6/2005 12:14:12 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Do you think 2-3 bedroom townhouses or 3-4 bedroom homes at modest price points is the more likely property type to attract stable longer term tenants? Hard to say because each area is different and people's housing preference are different depending on the local scene. Out in the 'burbs here, it's rare to find a larger single family home for rent and anyone who can afford to rent one usually is someone that would buy a home within a reasonable amount of time, but a townhome gets you people who rent for years and years. Maybe they are single, retired or single parents so they don't have the desire for something that takes a lot of maintenance, they don't want to own. In the city, you can get extremely stable renters if the rent is priced right. You have to pay them to move out! I've had one of my current tenants for over ten years, she's paid for the house. I finally went in to do some painting for her this year....it has been great. I was used to having to paint every two or three years. Another place I had was the right size but the neighborhood had an attitude about renters which they didn't hesitate to vocalize and no one I ever had in there stayed more than a couple of years and most stayed only one year. I finally sold the place because I couldn't deal with the turnover or the complaints from the nosy neighbors. We had one huge old 5 bedroom place in the city and we got great rents but it was near a college so it was always a "party house". The college used to make it's freshmen spend one year in the dorms and then they could live off campus. They changed the rule to 2 years in the dorms and it blew our business model because that meant a two year turnover instead of three year. That's when I moved my biz in there and stopped renting it out. It wasn't worth it to have to go in there with a shovel every two years even though we got great rents because there was always a bidding war for the house between several student groups. OTOH I know people in CA who have rented their two bedroom house dumps for over 30 years. The price difference is just so great there. There is not such a great difference between renting and buying here although it is certainly more so than it was when we bought our rentals.