The Benicia home rental market is changing
We have noted several changes in the Benicia rental home market lately. Overall, the market is still strong with both a high demand and also a steady supply of new inventory.
Conventional wisdom is that the buying/selling market and the rental market are inversely related. This means that when one does well, the other does not. For the past several years when the buying/selling market has suffered the rental market is soared. Now that the buying/selling market is heating up, we are seeing the rental market also heating up just as quickly. So, conventional wisdom is out the window now that both markets are doing well.
One detail contributing to this is a factor that we had predicted and are now seeing come true - as the buying/selling market heats up, real estate agents that had "dipped" into property management are now starting to jettison their property management portfolio to focus on their primary task - selling. So, we are gaining new investor-clients who have been fired by their real estate agent.
Also, with the heating up of the buying market, we continue to see a steady flow of new clients who are purchasing their first (or more than first) investment property. Of course, they then turn to Delgado for their property management needs.
Another factor driving up the Benicia home rental market is the influx of new residents moving to the area in response to the improved employment outlook in the entire San Francisco Bay Area.
An interesting item we are seeing is investor-clients talking to us about a plan to sell in either 2014 or 2015 and so strategizing with us on how to best manage their property for the next year or two until they put it on the market. Given that the impediment to the buying market really taking off is a lack of inventory, I suspect that this trend of investors starting to sell in the next year or two will simply fuel buying by other investors and continue the strong cycle.
To note - we have consistently rented 15-18 homes per month for each of the past several months. Given that the geographic area in which we work is fairly small (Benicia and part of Vallejo), these are very impressive numbers and supports our opening statement of the Benicia home rental market remaining strong. In fact, in the first 6 days of June we rented another 5 homes.
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