There are many reasons I love new dedicated rental buildings. There’s also a lot of reasons I love working out of a RE/MAX brokerage. I have many great commercial clients and a lot of wonderful friends who are simple residential clients. There’s also a world that crosses the divide; investors who want to move up from a couple dozen houses to an apartment building.
This summer however, the two worlds connected in a new way for me. I had three clients move out of new dedicated residential rental construction and buy homes. In one case they were a young professional couple who bought a $250k townhouse, one bought a $450k new build detached home and one bought a $350k existing home. The common reason they all gave for moving out? The poor quality of the building and the management. In one case there was an 8 foot long settlement crack in the living room.
The double edged sword is this: It’s great to build nice looking buildings and push for the top end of the rent range, but the tenants you attract are high maintenance, have high expectations and the same high incomes that fuel your top of the market rents also make them great home buyer candidates. They’re renting by choice and it doesn’t take much to change their minds and move them into an ownership mindset.
Come to think of it, I might start targeting some residential buyer focused advertising at those buildings to see if I can’t convert them into good buyer leads for my team…..
