Seattle

[Pratt]

Hi All,

Wondering what the current SFH rental market is like.

From owners:

1. How is the renter availability?
2. Is the weaker SFH market resulting in more renters or is the SFH rental market also going down?

From renters or prospective renters

1. For those of you looking to rent an SFH instead of an apartment for various reasons (house with yard, dog etc etc), are you seeing SFH rent prices down from where they were couple years ago?
2. Availability. Do you see a lot of SFH rentals or is the inventory there down?

Lot of public statistics are on “overall rental market” in Seattle, but due to apartment complexes included in it, it is not useful for this specific segment measurement.  

Thanks,

[ChadDierickx]

Hi,

I'm neither a landlord of a SFH nor a renter of one, but I have heard stories lately from customers who are getting great responses from prospective tenants and multiple applications. Most recently, a customer who was unable to sell his home in the timeline and for the price he had to get chose to rent it out instead.

Best,

Chad

[paydirt68]

I would have to agree with you Chad.  There are many properties where owners are unable to sell for what they owe or sell in a timely manner and choose to become investors or Accidental Landlords.  Lots of properties are now available at good lease pricing.  The only problem I see is that they are new to this and that can sometimes make things difficult for all parties in the lease.  It helps when they choose to use a property manager.  If you find a true investor grade landlord that is going to best the best.

[Flyer24]

Anecdotally, in higher end areas of the city some of these Accidental Landlords have unrealistic expectations with regards to rent -- many of themy bought homes at the peak and financed them when rates were north of 6.5%...which means their payments (unless they did adjustables) are high right now and they can't refinance because of value declines.

So they try to set rents that "make them close to whole" on their monthly mortgage.  Of course, with today's interest rates that sometimes makes their house cheaper to buy (at current market value) than rent...and therefore the house sits empty.

[nat_cr]

My husband and I have started looking to rent because we haven't yet found the house we want to buy. My impression is that the rental market in Seattle right now is hot for landlords. Things are renting fast and for much more than I would have thought. More than what they were 3 years ago when I looked for a rental. Most of the houses I've seen are renting for $1900 on the low end and $3K+ on the high end. Averaging $2300 depending on location for something that has been updated at least somewhat recently.  Even townhouses are renting at $2300. As far as inventory - there doesn't appear to be an abundance of them. But not impossible to find. Not sure how good the renters coming through are. 

[MM_Dollar_Prob]

I ran into this exact sample problem a year ago.  I moved out to Seattle in May and decided to rent for a year to get my bearings before I decided where I wanted to live longer term.  I looked all over the place (wallingford, QA, greenlake, etc.) for a SFH with a yard and it was really tough to find something in good shape that was also reasonably priced.  My budget was ~$2500 - $3000/month and I was looking for a 3 bed 2 bath.

I put in an application at probably 2 or 3 places before finally getting a place that I found on craigslist.  All the places I looked at seemed to be getting multiple applications and the landlords certainly had their pick.  My situation was a little more complicated because there are a lot of people that won't rent to anyone with a dog and I have one.