Doing Your Homework: Stay on Top of Market Trends
Here’s an easy way to keep up with rents in your area. Rentbits.com is an online rental advertising site, with a few bonus tools that landlords and property managers might find useful.
Rental rates: find out what average rents are in your area, with a quick-view graph that shows trends, as well as current rents. Are things looking up—so you can think about ending that costly promotion you’re running? Or, are things trending downward in your city, which may mean you have to cut rents to stay competitive?
Here’s a graph showing average rental rates in Charlotte, NC, over the past 12 months, for 1BR, 2BR, and 3+BR apartments—but you can search for houses, too. The graph shows that rents are down from a May 2009 high, but are no longer declining. The trend is definitely flattening here.
You can limit your search by number of bedrooms to just track those that compete with your rental units.
Another set of data pops up below each graph, depicting current rental rates with average and median figures. The chart also shows the number of units advertised, by bedroom size. Data is compiled based on over 7,000,000 listings, according to the RentBits website.
Searchers also have the option to choose other cities, within 10 miles of the main entry. Data from small cities are not readily available, but you can obtain a widget to plug into your website, showing average rental rates for any zip code. Another widget offered campares rents in four different zip codes.
These free tools are easy ways to make your website more interactive and to keep you and your potential tenants informed about the market. The more information you have, the better prepared you are to handle changes in the rental housing business!