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High vacancy rates, falling prices give renters edge — for now
If you're a renter hoping to find a single-family house, now is a good time. There are more houses to choose from than there have been in the past few years, and rents generally haven't gone up.
However, this good news for tenants is bad news for landlords — and prospective investors considering taking advantage of low interest rates to purchase a rental house. Rather than being a cash cow, many rentals aren't even generating cash flow.
"There seems to be this huge disconnect," observes Tamara Simon, owner of Seattle's Koss Property Management. She notes that buyer demand is driving home prices ever upward, yet lack of renter demand is keeping the rental-house market firmly mired in the doldrums.
Flat market
That rental reality is echoed by an annual survey that reveals single-family home rents peaked in 2002 and have fallen back since in King and Snohomish counties. And generally, the bigger the house, the more the rent, on average, has declined.
Conducted by Dupre1Scott Apartment Advisors, the survey looks at rents and vacancies for homes, small multiplexes and smaller apartment buildings.
Among the survey's findings:
Average two-county rents for all sizes of houses now stand at $1,352, down from $1,383 two years ago.
The average rent for a two-bedroom house in the two counties stands at $1,048. That's 5 percent less than two years ago.
For three-bedroom houses, the two-county average is $1,313, or 6 percent less than in 2002.
The average rent for four-bedroom homes in the neighboring counties is down 9 percent, to $1,695.
Only five-bedroom houses have not seen a price decline. Today, their average, two-county monthly rent stands at $1,879, essentially unchanged from two years ago.
David Dankers has no trouble believing these numbers. The vice president of Seattle's Apple Property Management, Dankers estimates rents on the in-city houses his firm manages easily have dropped 5 to 10 percent over the last year alone.
"A typical house on Queen Anne that last year rented for $1,500 this year got $1,350," observes Dankers. "It's definitely still a renter's market. There's no doubt about it."
Demand should increase
Rental rates obviously are tied to demand, and with the economy rebounding and creating jobs, it would seem like the demand for housing would be up. That's indeed true. But the demand has been for homes to buy.
That's been fueled by recent mortgage-interest rates in the 5 to 6 percent range, and explains why house prices have been going up while rents have been declining. In essence, those who wanted to become homeowners have done just that, leaving vacancies in their wake.
"I've lost many good tenants," reports Chris Benis, who owns more than a dozen Eastside rental houses. "People who could afford to buy a house have gone and bought one," leaving him with more empty properties than ever.
At the same time, low interest rates also are luring prospective investors. Benis has noted a 30 percent increase in the number of students enrolling in the class he teaches, "Landlording 101," at Discover U, a Seattle school that specializes in continuing and adult-education classes.
Many students tell him they're leery of the stock market and are turning to income property because they consider it a better investment. "They think there's going to be a ton of appreciation," he observes.
Over time that's proven true. According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, single-family houses locally have appreciated 33 percent in the last five years. At the same time, Dupre2Scott's statistics reveal just an 8 percent increase in two-bedroom house rents. And most of that was four and five years ago.
All this explains why Benis gives his investor-students this piece of counsel: "I hope you have deep pockets. The rents you get vs. the price you pay are way out of whack."
He has one Bellevue-area house, for example, that he thinks he could easily sell for $325,000. Now vacant, he's reduced the rent on this four-bedroom, two-bath home to $1,395 — and still has had no takers. "I make appointments to show it, and only a third of the time do the people show up," he says.
If an investor were to buy this property, putting 10 percent down, the monthly principal and interest payment would be about $1,830 — or $435 more than Benis is asking. Add property taxes, insurance and maintenance on top of that, and it's easy to understand why Benis says, "I used to buy a house or two a year, but I haven't bought one in the last couple of years because I can't figure out how to make it pay."
He's not the only one. Simon, of Koss Property Management, says, "It's very rare at this point to have someone buy a single-family house and then have me manage it. There's just no way unless you're putting down massive amounts of money."
As for making a killing by snapping up foreclosure bargains, Benis says that might be possible, "If you can beat out the other 200 people chasing the same thing." He recalls one investor he met who did just that. "He chased 100 houses to get one. He spent a lot of time."
It's a challenging job
Another landlord, Glenn Peterson, laughs that his advice to prospective investors would be: "Don't watch any late-night infomercials. These guys try to tell you how to make a lot of money in real estate. They talk about getting deals. They don't talk about landlording."
As an active member of a property investors club called the Real Estate Association of Puget Sound, Peterson has learned that landlording means learning how to select good tenants and keep them. (Right now, that's by lowering or not raising rents.) It means knowing and following legal requirements. It means knowing how to deal with property damage and maintenance issues. And that's just for a start.
"I think you can make more money putting more effort into your regular job than putting the same effort into this," Peterson says.
The single-family landlords who are doing well, reports Simon, are those whose rentals are priced below $1,400. "From $1,095 to $1,395 is a huge demand," she observes. "As you start to get past $1,395, that's where you have some difficulty getting a tenant."
Still, Simon notes demand for houses beats demand for apartments, so concessions (like half a month's free rent) are very rare.
For many renters, $1,095 a month is nonetheless a huge financial bite. But those who can't afford a house yet but don't want to live in a big apartment complex may take heart from another piece of information gleaned from the Dupre3Scott Report: The average rent on a two-bedroom unit in a duplex to fourplex is $852 — or almost one-fourth less than the average rent for the same size house.
In a year where the balance clearly is tipped in favor of renters, this is just one more piece of good news coming their way.
