Scanning tactics for a town's rental demand

[Anthony C]

Hi all,

Among other things I look at to determine a city's rental demand I try to browse local property managers sites. If those sites show the prop mgr's themselves have say a dozen nice homes available for rent, this has been ruling that city out for me.

I figure if they can't get all their homes rented and they are the local professionals, things probably won't be easy for me either.

Agree? If not, why? If there's only a few available, maybe it's not too bad..but 5+, 10+?

I also check things such as the local craigslist and zillow for homes for rent, but the prop mgr's excess supply seems ominous.

[Jon Holdman]

I'm not sure the number of available properties on a PM's web site is a good metric. If vacancy rates run 5% (quite good), and the PM is managing 200 properties, that means they have ten available at all times. OTOH, if vacancy rates are 20% (horrible) but the manager only manages 50 properties, they still would have ten available at all times.

I watch turnover. Not on PM sites, though that's a good idea, but yard signs. If the signs come and go, I know there's pretty strong demand. If the signs are up for weeks or months, there's a problem. You could do the same with the PM sites. Check every week. If the same ones are up week after week, you know the market is slow.