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Updated over 10 years ago on . Most recent reply

Does time of year have an impact on listing time for rentals?
Im curious what everyone thinks in regards to listing time for rentals during the summer/ winter/ fall/ spring time frames.
I seem to have much more demand in the summer months, and Im not having much response for a 2/2 condo that I am currently leasing for a Nov. 1 move in. I was talking to an agent that recently went to a seminar and they had data to support an even demand throughout the year for rental homes, vs. sales (where the spring and summer months tended to do better).
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Hi! I am one suburb over from you and handle our company rentals in the Northwest suburbs. SFRs.
I will give you an example to answer your question. Every property we have rented out before a month ago (that story to follow) was listed May through July 1 timeframe. Found a tenant meeting our criteria on the second or third app after maybe 2 weeks for all of those. This year got we got something listed August 1st and just got the lease signed *yesterday* after dropping the price in $50 or $25 increments over August and 8 applications (not including a million other strongly interested inquiries that didn't get to the application stage). Plus the house was just fully painted and recarpeted and showed great.
I knew it would be harder in August but I didn't think it would be *that* much harder. In fact, we rented it for $100 mo less than what we rented it for last July!!
Going forward we are not letting leases expire beyond June 30th. Long story short, we didn't get possession of this unit until mid-July and it took til Aug1st to get it relisted since we had to repaint and recarpet. There were lucky to get it done that fast. Now, we did lose 10 days trying to get $50/mo more than what we got for it last year since comps said we could, but those comps were from just a month or two before and that made all the difference.
I was thinking that since these were SFRs, and school starts end of August, anyone that wanted to move that needed a SFR with 3 beds and 2 baths already did. I do open houses twice a week and we didn't get anyone with school age kids like we usually do. Given yours is a 2/2 condo I am not so sure now. Where is your condo?