Archive for the ‘Homes For Rent’ Category

If you are planning to buy and operate housing homes for rent, you need to learn from the mistakes of other landlords who have experienced huge losses in their rental investments.

Oftentimes, first-time rental investors rush into buying rental properties which are seemingly bargain-priced, but in reality in need of costly repairs.

To avoid losses in your real property investments, study common investment assumptions that have turned out wrong and see to it that you do not make the same assumptions.

One of the first incorrect rental investment assumptions is consistent rental income. Many landlords assume that the rental housing will always have a tenant. When estimating your cash flow projections, you should factor in times that the rental property has no tenant.

With this vacancy possibility, you should also have funds to cover monthly mortgage payments during months you have no tenant. Have a contingency plan in case your rental property is not occupied by a paying tenant for the first 12 months.

The other wrong assumption is the low cost of repairs and property maintenance. To make your housing homes for rent always attractive to tenants, you are expected to replace defective appliances and repair major damages.

To prevent unexpected and costly repairs, you need to set up a maintenance schedule. Include in your rental contract a provision that would allow you to periodically check the exteriors of the property to detect damages and prevent further deterioration.

Another common mistake committed by landlords is their failure to conduct thorough checks on potential tenants. Remember that your rental income will depend on the ability of your tenants to pay consistently their rents, so check their rental payment history.

You can obtain needed personal information from your potential tenants without violating privacy or discrimination laws by using a rental application form crafted by a lawyer. A copy of this form is available for free from nonprofit legal web sites.

After receiving the filled-out application form, contact previous landlords and employers and other references. Before choosing your final tenant, get a credit report from a paid service so you can check if your potential tenant has a history of account delinquencies and late payments.

Additionally, see to it that you comply with all state and local laws related to housing homes for rent. Your property should meet safety and health standards, zoning codes and building codes so you would not be charged with non-compliance and liability lawsuits.

Commercial properties for rent have become great opportunities for Oregon businessman Chuck Shepard during the downturn.

Shepard said that there have been business opportunities he was able to take advantage of because of the recession. He explained further that he would not have been able to afford the investment costs required during normal times when property prices were soaring.

One of the commercial properties Shepard has acquired during the downturn is the Crescent Lake Lodge and Resort in the Cascades, which features 17 cabins in a lodging structure. At the start of the recession, he offered $2 million to acquire the property, but he failed to complete the purchase because financing fell through as the recession worsened.

Nobody else offered to buy the property, so it remained for sale. Shepard, meanwhile, continued to find ways to purchase the property. Shepard owns a real estate investment firm called Umbrella Properties and a ski property called Hoodoo Mountain Resort.

Finally, Shepard decided to buy the property using his own assets without using financing from lenders. He offered $1.65 million, which is about one-third his original offer, and the deal was completed in two weeks.

The resort deal was completed less than a month after Shepard acquired assets that include commercial properties for rent in Crescent Junction. The real estate assets are all located in a nine-acre property that features one duplex, five houses, an RV park, 24 storage units and two office buildings.

Shepard said that the 9-acre property had been on the market for several years at a price of $3 million. Because the property was facing foreclosure, Shepard said he was able to acquire it for only around one-third of the listing price.

According to Shepard, he was able to build up his real property portfolio because he took advantage of downturns. In the early 1980s when the real estate market was also depressed, he said he spent all his money buying rental apartments and when the economy recovered, his investments appreciated by as much as tenfold.

He has also been buying rental properties during the current downturn, increasing his number of rental units to around 1,900 from about 1,700 last year.

Shepard said his commercial properties for rent are doing well because they are well maintained and they are rented out at affordable prices. He also said that he is putting profits back into the improvement of his investments to make the resorts and campgrounds the best in the region.

Vacancy rates for both homes for rent and homes for sale have been increasing in many cities in the country, according to a study made by forbes.com.

Forbes.com studied Census Bureau homeowner and rental vacancy rates in the nation’s 75 biggest metro areas in the first quarter and ranked these areas based on their average increase in both homeowner and rental vacancy rates compared to the same period in 2008.

Kansas City ranked first on forbes.com’s list of abandoned cities. The rental housing vacancy rate increased from 11.9 percent to 15 percent while property owner vacancy rate almost doubled, jumping to 3.8 percent from the previous rate of 2.1 percent.

In contrast, the average property owner vacancy rate for the 75 metro areas studied slightly improved from 3 percent to 2.7 percent. The rental housing vacancy rate also rose from 10 percent to 10.2 percent.

Analysts said that if homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates are increasing together, it means that there is an overbuilding of homes or there is a decline in population.

Other metro areas posted increases in both rental housing vacancy rates and homeowner vacancy rates. The Oakland and San Francisco metro area, the second in the list, had increased vacancy rates because people were leaving high-cost Bay Area for more affordable cities. The rental housing vacancy rate soared from 4.7 percent last year to 7.1 percent this year. Homeowner vacancies rose by more than three times from 1.1 percent last year to 3.4 percent this year.

High vacancy rates in the third metro area in the list, Tucson, were the result of overbuilding of homes during the boom.

Many of the metro areas on the vacancy list are struggling from the effects of the boom. Miami, eighth in the list, increased its rental vacancy rate from 11.4 percent last year to 12.7 percent this year. Miami is battered with empty high-rise residential towers completed just before the housing market collapsed.

The homeowner vacancy rate increased more sharply, from 3.8 percent to 5.6 percent due largely to foreclosures.

According to a Florida foreclosure survey, 40 percent of all vacant homes in the Miami metro area are foreclosures.

Nicolas Retsinas, head of the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, said vacancy rates result from both supply and demand factors. Overbuilding causes supply problems while the troubled economy, particularly unemployment, causes demand problems.

Landlords in Boston have been experiencing high vacancies as the number of apartment rentals increase across the city, even in higher-end neighborhoods. Based on MLS records, the number of apartment rentals has nearly doubled to 535 units in Boston and has almost tripled to 149 units in Back Bay, an upscale commercial and residential neighborhood [...]

Renters may relate to the exhaustion, frustration and disappointment over houses for rent that are very poor in quality. Renters should be able to live in a house that would give them a good quality of life, and not just some space to sleep in. One renter could spend a year in looking for the [...]

The economic recession has been continually hurting the country. Particularly, the housing industry has been experiencing the effects of the recession. Homeowners are not able to pay their home mortgages. This has extended to renters and landlords, who are also suffering the bad effects of the economy. The homes for rent market continued to crawl [...]

Tenants of homes for rent need not worry too much about losing their home when they lose their money. A lot of homeowners and renters are getting unemployed. As a result, people are unable to pay their home mortgages and their rent. This would result to foreclosure and eviction. In Connecticut, this situation can be [...]

The administration of newly elected President Barack Obama has been continuously taking their best efforts to protect homeowners against the threats of foreclosure. Particularly, military homeowners are given attention, especially those who are currently occupying homes for rent. According to a Defense Department, the bill named Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act of 2009 was recently [...]

San Francisco currently has the most expensive fess for homes for rent. However, with that also come a lot of renters’ protection laws. From rent control to eviction, a renter can feel safe and protected in San Francisco. This year, San Francisco has already passed four laws that aim to strengthen the protection it has [...]

The Congress is set to make a change in foreclosure laws, as they move for renters in foreclosed properties to be protected from being homeless. In several states across the country, such as Illinois and Missouri, landlords of houses for rent do not have the obligation to notify the occupants of their houses in case [...]