![\"It's](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/rent.png\" "\\"rent\\"")
<\/a>he news is good in the Uptown rental market as rates are down and are likely to remain there for some time to come, area rental agents project.<\/p>\nThe outlook is even favorable for those unfortunates suddenly thrust into the rental market due to home foreclosures: Property managers are making allowances, and acting accordingly.<\/p>\n
As for finding just the right rental property, the Internet has made it easy. Just go online to Craigslist, they advise, where a nearly inexhaustible selection of available inventory at all price points can be found.<\/p>\n
Joan McAdam, a property manager with Golden Management, which handles properties countywide including Uptown, said home foreclosure these days isn’t a big handicap for rental applicants.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love those people, take them in a heartbeat,\u201d she said. \u201cIn most cases it wasn’t really their fault \u2013 it’s happened to everybody. If they have a foreclosure on their credit, we don’t count that against them. We’ve found they make exceptional renters.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAdam said the biggest factors weighing on Golden’s decision to rent to a foreclosure client are solid employment and stable credit. \u201cWe don’t go by the credit score if they’ve lost their home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For those landlords who do look at credit scores, significantly lower tallies have become more acceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re seeing a lot more people out there that have terrible credit \u2013 500 to 550 FICO scores, which range from 400 to 850,\u201d said property manager Tim Cassidy of Cassidy & Associates. \u201cWe’re seeing lower scores, dramatically, from a couple of years ago when the average was 675 or 700. With vacancies a little higher and it being a little more difficult to get tenants, market demands are requiring landlords to be a little bit more flexible. Most property managers are having secondary criteria for those people having difficulty with foreclosures, short sales, bankruptcy.\u201d<\/p>\n
FICO credit scores are calculated from a number of credit categories including payment history, amounts owed, length of credit history, new credit and types of credit used.<\/p>\n
Cassidy said the recession is causing a change in population demographics, exerting downward pressure on rental prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people are living communally, kids going back to live with their parents, parents going to live with their kids, sisters and brothers living in the same households,\u201d he said. \u201cHouseholds are expanding. People have lost their jobs, their houses, so vacancy is a factor. It takes a little bit longer to find a home or rental.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years ago, Cassidy explained, tenants could almost find their own replacements before moving on. \u201cThat’s just not the case now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sue Snowbarger of S&D Property Management agreed economic times are hard for tenants and that’s being \u201cgrasped\u201d by landlords. Landlords are more willing now to give prospective renters who’ve fallen on hard times the benefit of the doubt, she said.<\/p>\n
But Snowbarger does have one condition that she requires of all prospective tenants. \u201cThe first thing they have to do is be honest with me,\u201d she said. \u201cTell me what happened. It’s not a new story. I understand. If they’ve lost their home but they still have the same income and they’re otherwise debt-free, I’ll rent to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
It’s a simple equation, she said: supply and demand. Rental prices are slipping back in these recessionary times because vacancies are rising, largely due to continuing high unemployment. It’s an inversely proportional relationship that landlords can’t ignore. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s trickle down,\u201d Snowbarger said. \u201cPeople who’ve had jobs for years have lost them, or they’ve had their hours cut. We (property managers) can’t have an empty house just because we’re too stubborn to lower the rent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Landlords are making other concessions too.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst and last month’s rent and moving costs \u2013 that’s pretty hard to come up with for a lot of people,\u201d Snowbarger said. \u201cSo we’ll help with move-in costs. We’ll let them put half the deposit down, and they can pay the rest of the deposit over a three- or six-month period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cassidy doesn’t expect rental rates in Uptown to change much anytime soon, but when they do, they will increase.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as rentals go, we’re at the bottom,\u201d he concluded. \u201cI think it’s going to stabilize from here and slowly climb.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Dave Schwab SDUN Reporter The news is good in the Uptown rental market as rates are down and are likely to remain there for some time to come, area rental agents project. The outlook is even favorable for those unfortunates suddenly thrust into the rental market due to home foreclosures: Property managers are making […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":840,"featured_media":243275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"It's not their default: renters welcome","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}