Archive for the 'Apartments/Rents' Category
October 26th, 2009, 2:00 am by Jeff Collins
Three Orange County cities with the highest vacancy rates had the steepest rent reductions at large apartment complexes during the summer, the latest numbers from apartment tracker RealFacts show. According to RealFacts:
| City |
Occu. |
Rent |
Chg. |
| Westminster |
89.4% |
$1,312 |
-9.0% |
| Mission Viejo |
92.6% |
$1,400 |
-7.2% |
| Irvine |
91.5% |
$1,779 |
-7.1% |
| Newport B. |
93.6% |
$1,842 |
-7.1% |
| Placentia |
94.5% |
$1,367 |
-6.1% |
| Santa Ana |
94.2% |
$1,324 |
-5.8% |
| Tustin |
94.0% |
$1,473 |
-5.8% |
| Huntington B. |
94.9% |
$1,422 |
-5.2% |
| La Habra |
95.2% |
$1,272 |
-5.1% |
| Stanton |
94.2% |
$1,245 |
-5.1% |
| Orange |
94.9% |
$1,551 |
-5.0% |
| Fountain Valley |
94.6% |
$1,396 |
-4.6% |
| Aliso Viejo |
93.7% |
$1,644 |
-4.6% |
| Costa Mesa |
93.4% |
$1,579 |
-4.4% |
| Lake Forest |
95.1% |
$1,472 |
-4.4% |
| Buena Park |
93.8% |
$1,296 |
-3.6% |
| Fullerton |
92.8% |
$1,374 |
-3.4% |
| Anaheim |
92.9% |
$1,291 |
-3.0% |
| Cypress |
96.8% |
$1,382 |
-3.0% |
| Laguna |
95.3% |
$1,576 |
-2.4% |
| RSM |
92.7% |
$1,489 |
-2.2% |
| Garden Grove |
95.4% |
$1,348 |
-2.1% |
| Brea |
94.4% |
$1,469 |
3.0% |
| O.C. |
93.4% |
$1,523 |
-5.0% |
- Apartment owners in Westminster — which had the county’s highest percentage of empty units — made the greatest rent cuts. Rents in Westminster’s large apartment complexes dropped 9% to an average of $1,312 a month.
- Nearly 11% of the units in Westminster’s large complexes were empty.
- Mission Viejo and Irvine had the second- and third-biggest rent reductions.
- Mission Viejo landlords cut summer rental rates by 7.2% to an average of $1,400 a month.
- Apartment owners in Irvine cut rent by 7.1% to an average of $1,779 a month.
- Irvine had the county’s second-highest vacancy rate at 8.5%. Mission Viejo had the third-highest at 7.4%.
- Newport Beach — which tied Irvine for having the third-largest rent drop — continues to have the county’s highest apartment rents: $1,842, even though it fell 7.1% from the year before.
- Stanton had the county’s lowest rent: $1,245. Rents there fell 5.1% from summer of 2008.
- Rents went down last summer in 22 of the 23 cities included in RealFacts’ survey. RealFacts only includes cities with five or more complexes of 100 or more units.
- Brea was the sole O.C. city in the survey to see rents go up. Brea’s average rent in a large apartment complex increased 3% to $1,469 a month.
Countywide, the average rent was $1,523 over the summer, down 5% from the summer of 2008. The average vacancy rate was 6.6%, RealFacts reported.
RealFacts coverage:
Posted in: Apartments/Rents • Top tale • industry • numbers • RealFacts | 25 Comments »
October 23rd, 2009, 12:00 pm by Jon Lansner
 Click to enlarge Local home price have fallen so far and so fast that they have reach a point where — using my simple math — that the buy-or-rent equation places buying at the best spot in a decade.
I loaded my trusty spreadsheet with …
- Estimated mortgage payments from DataQuick. These number crunchers go in and estimate — based on the terms of mortgages that are public — what each borrower’s initial house payment may be.
- What I’ll call “Actual rents” at large apartments complexes, provided by several firms — most recently Realfacts. Actual rent? It’s average rents discounted by the amount of vacant apartments, reflecting what new tenant may be able to get.
When you compare the two, as the accompanying chart shows, you see house payments running double local rents during the late 1980s housing boom. During the ensuing bust, house payments ran down to as low as 56% above rents in 1999 — just above the just-concluded third quarter’s 57%!
After, ‘99 a brewing insanity took over. A homebuying frenzy pushed house prices skyward. Those shoppers fled apartments, forcing landlords to moderate their rent hikes. As a result, buying-to-rent ratio ratio soared to where house payments where 150% above rents. You know what came next!
Is this another bullish factor for the home-selling industry? Well …
- Rent indexes like the one that RealFacts creates, cannot capture all the concessions landlords are offering on top of their already lowered advertised monthly rates. So an aggressive rent shopper can get a better deal — and nudge this buy-vs.-rent math back towards renting.
- Skittish bankers are making it very difficult for all-but the overly qualified shoppers to get home loans. So the recent “affordability” — by many measures, in fact — simply an illusion for many credit-quality-challenged shoppers.
- And how secure is your job? Employment anxiety is not the type of climate that that’s conductive to energized house shopping.
Still, when you consider that the typical monthly mortgage payment is off 30% from in 2007 peak — that’s $1,257 a month — while rents have been flat in the same period, an opportunity has have been created for certain house shoppers.
Comparing costs:
Posted in: Affordability • Apartments/Rents • Top tale • bottom • numbers | 88 Comments »
October 21st, 2009, 12:01 am by Jon Lansner
 Click to enlarge Here’s a little stimulus created by an oversupply of apartments, from the latest quarterly report on conditions at Orange County’s larger complexes by apartment tracker RealFacts shows in the third quarter …
- Average rents at large Orange County complexes in the past quarter were $1,523 – that’s down $80 a month (or 5%) in a year. It’s the fourth consecutive quarterly year-over-year drop.
- This is the biggest yearly drop since RealFacts started watching O.C. apartments in 1994.
- At $1,523 average rent, Orange County is back to 2006 fourth-quarter rents by this math.
- Nationally, average rent — year over year — fell 3.7%.
- Average vacancy at these big Orange County complexes was 6.6% vs. 5.3% a year ago.
- However, vacancies fell from the second quarter by 1 full percentage point, biggest drop in 7 years. To RealFacts, this is the first sign that the market may be slowly turning from renters’ control back to the landlords.
- Overall thoughts on O.C. market? Says RealFacts: “It’s a blue chip market….It won’t go down as far and will recover faster than other markets across the country.”
RealFacts coverage:
Real estate news:
Posted in: Apartments/Rents • Top tale • numbers • RealFacts | 46 Comments »
October 19th, 2009, 11:01 am by Jon Lansner
 With landlords scrambling to lure in tenants to fill empty apartment units by offering numerous discounts, Insider Q&A figured we’d ask “What’s up?” of Judith Legan, executive director of the South Coast Apartment Association. Her association represents more than 95,000 apartment homes in Orange and southern Los Angeles counties.
 Us: Are rents still falling?
Judith: We’re seeing signs that the market is beginning to stabilize, but it may have been a seasonal bump as summer is generally a busy time, with people wanting to get settled in a new home before school starts or a job change. Like other sectors of real estate, the apartment market is tied heavily to job growth.
Us: Are we seeing new or more incentives?
Judith: Yes. As is typical in down markets, apartment owners are being very inventive in the ways they drive traffic. Western National, for example, offered a “Layoff Protection Plan.” Irvine Company created a special incentive for recent college graduates. Check apartment Web sites, rental housing magazines and housing sections of newspapers to find some clever promotions.
Us: Where is the market the softest, high or low end?
Judith: The apartment market is experiencing the same challenges at the higher end as the rest of the market. Renters are generally looking to cut expenses. What does that mean for consumers? An unprecedented opportunity for those with stable jobs to move up.
Us: What advice would you give renters? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in: Apartments/Rents • Insider Q&A • Top tale • industry • South Coast Apartment Association | 29 Comments »
October 14th, 2009, 6:00 pm by Jon Lansner
Real estate news and views from around the globe that make you go, “Really?”
- BUBBLY: One Hong Kong apartment — it is 6,158 square-feet big — sells for whopping $57 million (Associated Press) MORE HERE!
- TRADE OFF: Many homeowners turn into reluctant landlords when they must move but can’t sell a home. (Reuters) MORE HERE!
- TENANTS NEEDED: Energy slump pushes Wyoming vacancies higher (cbs4denver.com) MORE HERE!
- DEALING: Incentives ($99 deposits, free first month, free heat/hot water) offered to lure Maine’s renters. (WMTW) MORE HERE!
- EXCEPTION: Southern Oregon bucks high national apartment vacancy rate (KDRV) MORE HERE!
Posted in: Apartments/Rents • Odds & ends • Top tale • industry • Really | 5 Comments »
October 12th, 2009, 2:00 am by Jon Lansner
 Commercial real estate trackers at Reis put Orange County’s currently very renter-friendly apartment market into an intriguing national perspective with their third quarter report. Here’s how Orange County shapes up in their survey of landlords across the land:
- Orange County’s 12-month effective rent growth (asking rents plus/minus concessions) was -5.5% — third biggest drop among the 79 major U.S. markets tracked.
- Local 12-month asking rent growth was -4.2% — fourth biggest decline among the 79 major U.S. markets tracked.
- O.C. Q3 vacancy rate 6.2% — 25th out of the 79 markets.
- Our 12-month vacancy point change was +1.5% — 36th out of 79 markets.
[ VOTE! Could real estate lift O.C. out of recession? CLICK HERE! ]
Snippet of national comments from Reis:
“The issue is that the end is not yet in sight for the current downturn; even if the technical recession may be over (as the Federal Reserve seems to be implying), labor markets tend to recover with some lag, and it is only when labor markets stabilize and recover that we will see a ramp-up in household formation that represents the greatest driver for rental apartments. It seems likely that apartments will have to endure a few more quarters of distress, lower rents and higher vacancies.”
Here’s the top 5, bottom 5 and national averages for these 4 slices of apartment-renting stats for Q3:
- Yearly change in effective rents …
| Rank |
Market |
Eff. rent chg. |
| 1 |
Dayton |
+0.7% |
| 2 |
Suburban Maryland |
+0.6% |
| 3 |
Houston |
+0.6% |
| 4 |
Baltimore |
+0.5% |
| 5 |
Syracuse |
+0.3% |
|
US |
-2.7% |
| 75 |
Ventura County |
-5.1% |
| 76 |
San Francisco |
-5.3% |
| 77 |
Orange County |
-5.5% |
| 78 |
New York |
-6.8% |
| 79 |
San Jose |
-8.0% |
- Yearly change asking rents …
| Rank |
Market |
Ask rent chg. |
| 1 |
Suburban Maryland |
+1.5% |
| 2 |
Houston |
+1.2% |
| 3 |
District of Columbia |
+1.0% |
| 4 |
Dayton |
+1.0% |
| 5 |
Dallas |
+0.9% |
|
US |
-1.8% |
| 75 |
Ventura County |
-4.0% |
| 76 |
Orange County |
-4.2% |
| 77 |
San Francisco |
-5.4% |
| 78 |
New York |
-5.6% |
| 79 |
San Jose |
-6.8% |
Posted in: Apartments/Rents • Top tale • numbers • Reis | 75 Comments »
September 28th, 2009, 6:00 pm by Jon Lansner
Real estate news and views from around the globe that make you go, “Really?”
Posted in: Apartments/Rents • Odds & ends • Top tale • numbers • Really | 19 Comments »
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