Greg we are seeing the same thing to a large extent… overall things are going ok and we are down to 1 vacancy in the rentals, 1 on retail market forsale, and 5 LD’s down from a total 16 vacant’s a couple months ago.
The biggest thing I’m seeing is the total move in cost to the tenant, I’ve recently went back to week-to-week on a lot of our older singlewides to limit move in cost. This allows us to move a tenant in for about 200 (first and last weeks rent) and start collecting money pretty much immediately. The process for evictions on weekly rentals in very swift here and the tenant literally does not have time to do damage if they don’t pay…
Of the weekly tenants that I moved in over the last month only one is giving me any problems and she’s a normal slow pay that would have never made it as a monthly tenant.
The good news is that our rents are going up slightly and making huge jumps in the weekly market. Overall rents are jumping by $25-50 a month or $10-25 per week when we have a unit go vacant.
The treadmill sucks at times but overall it hasn’t been that bad of a summer for us, (knock on wood) it seems folks are staying home this year instead of blowing my money errr… the rent money… on a nice vacation.
Karl I will argue the point of using a year lease with you in this case… Scott and Tony really pounded on me with this one (mainly Scott after telling him about a 2 year lease I signed a long time ago)
A year lease will not prevent a tenant from moving if they want to and they are not going to be forced to pay the 10 months rent in court. Now days the courts tend to lean more toward the tenant unless the landlord really knows what they are doing. (which ain’t that hard) A yearly lease locks the LL in to the tenant for a specific period of time where as a MTM lease can be terminated quickly if you accidentally pick a bad apple.
For a quick example my new weekly tenant referred to a second ago started to move a third party in that didn’t fit the property, on a year lease I must give a ten day notice to correct, if they fail to correct I spend 7-15 days waiting on court in which case most every time the judge is going to give the tenant an additional 30 days to fix the problem only to see us in court again so that I can wait 10 more days before I get my property back.
I served her a 2 day notice to correct and a notice to pay or quit, tenant fixed the problem and I got paid… she got to stay.
Second tenant has a son that is hooked on something, he beats her and has caused every tenant in the property problems. (along with me due to having to install a bunch of deadbolts) She owns her home but is on a MTM lease, I must allow the home to stay on the lot for 60 days but I can boot her and her son in 17-23 days if he reenters the property.
With the first tenant I’d be looking 45 days MINIMUM before I get my property back on a yearly lease along with damage in most cases cause I’m being an a$$hole. On the second tenant (owner occupied) I’d be looking at 60-90 days. I’ve been down this road and after taking almost 90 days to get one of my property’s back it’ll never happen again. With a week to week lease I give a 2 day notice to terminate and court takes 7-15 days and I can have them out normally in about 20 days without ever giving a reason. MTM I normally take about 25 days and no more than 30.
On lot rentals it’s a different case in part, with a financed sale I’d still lean toward MTM, on move in’s that I paid for or cash sales (or folks pending a lump of cash) I’d stick with lease’s long enough to cover my cost and hope for a LL friendly judge if push came to shove.
Best wishes,
Ryan Needler