I’m not the brightest bulb, but I’m not understanding the disconnect here. I understand that my screening standards are very high so my vacancies sit for longer than my competitors. I’m ok with that. But this market is ridiculous. Everybody’s rentals are sitting for months and months. Yet the news is constantly talking about the houses shortage. Even more confusing, the bigger complexes have extended vacancies and they are cleaning house. Court logs show they are booting out people every month even with vacancies. Not just for non payment. Cause and no cause as well. We can all read between the lines with that but I’m still confused. The bad applicants are out in force and the good applicants seem to have disappeared. I’ve tried raising the ad price, lowering the ad price, turning a BR into an “ office”, etc. What is going on? I’m on all the legit rental sites ( no Facebook or Craigslist). I can’t just go into all the local top employers break rooms anymore because they lock all the doors now. Except for Costco, if I hit that right tomorrow I’ll even get free pizza.

Rents due, the abundance of bad applicants isn’t surprising. They are always in need of housing, their behavior results in them moving often….I don’t think about them.

The shortage of qualified applicants is worth your time and effort. I would say that your marketing needs an overhaul. What you have been doing quit working, so try other methods. I believe that I and other regular contributors to this forum are way too reliant on Zillow and other platforms.

In one of my local FB groups, someone posted an article about low vacancy rates and the difficulty tenants have in finding a place. Yet here I set at 80 days and I've had maybe 5 showings. There's no shortage for solid tenants as we all are chasing them. It's the marginal tenants who have a problem. There's a shortage of decent tenants.

Same story where I'm at. I have got burned by not screening hard enough so I let mine sit empty rather than get destroyed. I advertise on fb and a sign in the yard. And have only had class d applicants

Same here... I take them down for a few days, rearrange the pictures and/or take "new" ones at different angles, change the wording on the ads but it's the same people that are inquiring.

I agree that advertising methods need to change with the times. For the last six years, I've used Zillow to advertise my open houses. One or two open houses was enough to get a qualified applicant. Last November, it only produced TWO people that came to the open house!

Ken,

Another point. I know full well that everyone in my area is dealing with the same pool of applicants but I read one LL claim that he's not empty for more than a week. That would be the case with me as well if I decided to take just anyone who can fog a mirror. The issue is that even at half the rent, I still wouldn't take most of these folks. It's unclear to me even at drastically reduced rent you could attract decent value conscious applicants.

Keep in mind how we got here. It explains much of what we see.

For almost 3 years in some areas, the Govt basically said, "You don't have to pay rent or leave you house, and we will protect you legally from anything the landlord tries to do." Sure, supposedly you were still on the hook to pay, but there was no enforcement mechanism, so many people stopped paying, accrued a huge debt, then left the landlords' holding the bag because there was no way they would ever catch up.

Others received stimulus payments from the Govt and used that to pay their rent while spending what would have been their rent money on increased lifestyle discretionary items. Then when the money train stopped, they never cut their lifestyle, having grown accustomed to it.

Now here we are today with record levels of eviction filings that have some courts back up 6-12 months. Many more tenants will eventually get booted out and have evictions and money judgments on their records.

What does all this mean? It's going to take 5 - 7 years to "reset" and get people back in the mindset that yes, they do have to pay their rent and no, it's not the Govt's or landlord's responsibility to make up the difference when you fall short. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better, and that's assuming the Govt doesn't inject itself into the housing market yet again with silliness like a national tenant's bill of rights.

That's the shortage no one is talking about: we have a dearth of qualified renters. Continued Govt interference just makes it harder to find people who are truly a good risk.

Max out your security deposits and screen like your livelihood depends on it, because it does.

Animal attitudes.

Peace got it right, with the 5- ESA evictions,

and Scammer mentalities.

Ya could be a scammer if ya (fill in the blank)

"My nicest and most expensive house has set empty way too long."

I typically don't do SFH and I had one last year that was my former business office that I renovated and attempted to rent without success. I decided to sell it about this time last year and had it sold in a weekend. I was asking for rent north of $ 2000 and there were no takers. I didn't have a single showing.

I am admin of a local housing group on FB and I am very quick to kick and ban the complainers and jerks and I get a lot of thank yous from both LLs and Prospects.

Lots of formerly long-term rentals turned short-term rentals turning BACK to long-term rentals right now. Super nice but super expensive for what local people can afford.

Saw a guy post the other day they are a family of 13...adults, kids, grandparents...looking for a big house they can all share. Two dogs too. Can you imagine?

I gave FB a few shots. Each time was worse than the last so that's a NOPE for me. With "good cause" looming here, I'm dumping my marginal tenants. Thankfully at this time there is only one unit with marginal tenants right now.

What SID said! I blame this whole fiaso on the extended moratoriums, especially in BLUE states/areas. Tenants became emboldened thinking "see it IS possible to live rent free...wheeeeeeee!" They are also great friends with "ambulance chaser" attorneys who want to make a case out of mold, slip 'n' fall, lead paint, you name it.

"Two Dogs to".

Ken I'm going to disagree about them getting houses as there has been pressure on housing since 2020. First covid pushed new people further out where they have more space and cheaper prices. They pushed up prices and then inflation made the dream of ownership unattainable to those who stayed put during covid. In the meantime anyone decent realized they would be a fool to move as most ll raised rents to the new market rate. All that's left are the covid rejects.

Sisco, I have my own website but if I put the energy in making it SEO like zillow, I'd be in the same spot. CL is a hard no and FB is dregs central. I pay for top spot on zillow so my ad doesn't age out and disappear. Short term nurses have fizzled too. I've also tried chatting up factories if they are near my unit to see if they want housing for newcomers, no dice if I even get someone to talk to. I haven't advertised in a newspaper for a loping time, lol. Or out a sign in the window.

Rents due I feel your pain. I have unit I just delisted on zillow it had hundreds of hits (which are meaningless) and over 200 messages since Nov. 31 filled out a prescreen, 7 got an email from me, showed to 1 and I declined their application when they applied. This is a 2 br. I took it down to list a 1 br and hope I can fill it plus draw a prospect to the other unit. I mentioned in one of Brad's posts, if he's starting to see what we see things are no headed back up.

Small potatoes, let's just face it, the productive people in NY are fleeing in droves to saner states (Blue to Red). MA, NY, WA, OR, VT, CT, ME, WI, IL, MI, MN (and now PA, possibly GA) are filled with miscreants and bums.

CA, CO, HI's only saving grace is the entertainment/tourism industry.

DC (and VA, MD) are subsisting on government jobs which we know produce nothing (but problems).

Small, whenever a school district hires a new teacher to replace the teacher who retired, or same scenario a nurse, or tech at hospital, a new owner of a plumbing supply store, or r whatever of a thousand possibilities that causes someone to need housing in your town, I believe that a g ogle search is how it starts.

I agree that catering to renters moving from one house to another may have limited upside, but good tenants are always on the move too.

Starting July 01, 2024, landlords in Los Angeles can no longer use "credit" as a reason to turn down an applicant. So last month I had an open house. I turned down 7 applicants and two reported me to "Housing". But the funny things was I sent these "bad apples" to three new buildings withing walking distance.

These properties were sponsored by the City. Owned by members on the City Counsel, paid for and construed with tax dollars. They have to rent around 25% to low income tenants. So my rejects applied and also got turned down by the City Housing Authority. Why?

1) Criminal back ground

2) Lack of constant employment

3) Owed back taxes

4) Etc.

I have one unit that has been empty since March 1. Put up ad on Zillow and craigslist mid February. Lots of "I want to set up a time to view" from Zillow listing. Most did not read the Minimum credit score & 3X rent requirement.

Fewer response from craigslist, but better overall applicants.

ALOT of the good ones became bad when they drank the "free stuff" Koolaid during the pandemic.

Small, do I understand correctly that you have no guv school teachers,cops, firemen?

I consider this largely lumped into L/T fraud. Any surprise that this niche is following the general fraud trend? The government, in the name of social justice, taught many in society that tenant history doesn't matter.