E-Renter News

What is “curb appeal?” It’s how your rental property appeals to drive-by and walk-by traffic—and it’s what can turn a potential renter on or off. Curb appeal means that a property looks safe, well cared for, and appealing. Curb appeal makes potential tenants want to take the next step and call you to view the inside of your rental property.

And it’s not important to just look good when your unit is for rent. Curb appeal is appreciated by your current tenants, too. In fact, it’s proven than a major reasons tenants move is failure of the landlord or property manager to properly maintain the unit.

Take a hard look at your rental property from the street or sidewalk. Do you see overgrown shrubs, too-tall grass, and peeling paint? Does your property look inviting or is it obvious it’s seen better days—and those better days were a decade ago? Ask yourself the hardest question: would you want to live here?

The good news is that it doesn’t take a ton of money or time to make your rental properties pop! Picking up any litter or trash is free. So is trimming the shrubs, if you do it yourself. Here are a few ideas to bring curb appeal to your rental properties:

Make sure there is no trash anywhere on the property. If you have issues with inadequate trash receptacles or pickup, take care of the problem. Enlist the help of a tenant or onsite manager if you don’t have time to keep the trash under control yourself.

Away with the peeling paint. A fresh coat of trim paint does wonders to make a building look clean and inviting. And choose colors carefully—just because the deep purple mis-tint was a good buy at the hardware store doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for your rental property!

Plant some flowers and shrubs. Establish new beds on each side of the entrance or sidewalk, and plant a few flowering shrubs or annuals. Flowers make people happy, and they don’t cost a fortune, either.

Pay attention to the little things. How do the address numbers look? Are any missing, or crooked? What about the railings? Are there missing supports? Should you fill the cracks in the sidewalk? Not only do these eyesores turn prospective tenants off, they are safety issues, too.

Safe, clean, and nice-looking rental properties will appeal to more tenants than a run-down property ever will. So take a look at your rental property’s curb appeal and do a little spring spurce-up!

A recent study showed that 1.2 million U.S. households were lost from 2005 to 2008. The loss occurred while the populations increased by 3.4 million.

The study, released by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reports that this decline likely contributed “significantly” to the current glut of apartments and single family rental homes on the market.

What happened, according to the study, is that individuals (adult children leaving a family home, couples or roommates who split up) did not strike out on their own to form new households; instead, they joined households already in existence. Foreclosed homeowners fit the category too; the study suggests that many have delayed their entry into a new housing situation (usually rental housing) and have instead been absorbed into existing households.

Once the job market stabilizes, household formation is expected to pick up—mostly because young people will feel more stable once they have a paycheck and a sense that their job isn’t going away. That’s good news for rental property owners and managers.

Even though recession is officially over, unemployment rates are not predicted to fall by any more than 2 percentage points by the end of 2012. The study indicates that it will take that long before normal rates of household formation (1—1.5 million per year) are seen again. And when it does, it will disproportionately benefit the rental market at first.

It looks like the housing over-supply will continue for the foreseeable future. But another piece of good news for rental property owners is that households who have moved were more likely to rent than to buy. Many families have suffered significant losses to wealth; down payments to purchase homes will be more difficult to come by.

Some interesting statistics from the study include that national home ownership fell from just over 69% to just over 67%—but the rental market saw steep declines, too--which only happens during periods of recession with high unemployment. And not surprisingly, children of higher-income parents tend to remain at home longer during recessions.