Rental Market

First Rate Property Management's November vacancy rate average was 6.9%. Looks like December will be a little higher. Like typical years, the inquiry and showing volume is quite low. December has also set a new record for us in late notices. When we call tenants to find out where rent is, we don't expect honest answers, but the overwhelming #1 stated cause this month has been that their hours have been cut and that they were looking for another job or getting a 2nd job. So the economy still remains to be a factor, or at least a good excuse.

Just the other day a tenant sent us an article that they had cut out of a magazine. Unfortunately, since it was cut out, I can not tell you the source of the article. Its title was how to tighten the belt in this economy. One of the items listed was, Pay Less Rent. The article advice:

New Sites

First Rate Property Management now owns about 25 domain names. We've created about 10 new and additional sites, such as www.BoiseStateApartments.com. Additionally, we are creating Local Business Center listings on Google, which are those listings you find near the top that show a map with pegs on them. These new sites are creating inquiries, but also helping with our Search Engine Optimization for our main site at www.FRPMrentals.com. Currently the www.Boise-Rentals.com site is a duplicate of the main site, but eventually, we'll modify it for Search Engine Optimization as well.

Blog

As you can see our newsletters are now in the form of a blog. Why? Well because blogs are the new thing and they help our site improve on search engines, so long as we use the typical key words. By having our site improve on the search engines, prospective tenants will find us first and hopefully rent from us first. So your participation can actually help us rent out your properties. So if you have the desire, please feel free to subscribe to these blog postings and to make comments. In order for these postings to really help, they need to include keys words used by prospective tenants. So if you can, be sure to include those in your comments. So here are some suggestions.

Area

Since we manage in the Boise, Meridian, and Eagle areas it is good to include those. Ada County, Idaho, or Treasure valley are good too, but lower priority.

Services

Tenants are looking for rentals. So they will certainly be searching by using words such as: rent, renting, rentals, lease, or leasing.

Types

Since we manage single family homes, condos, townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, four plexes, and small apartment buildings, these are good words too.

So a typical search may be, "Boise Rentals" or "Rentals in Boise" or "Homes for Rent in Boise." So you can see which words are most used.

Other services

Some tenant may actually look for rentals by searching for property management, or rental agency.

Sales Market

Inventory levels had dropped slightly and we saw an increase in sales, which is a good sign. However, with a majority of the sales coming from distress sales, properties in foreclosure, or bank owned properties, values continue to decline on small multi-family buildings. So its just a great time to buy.

In 2010 2/3 of my sales production were four plexes. So it is clear that in my mind, the biggest bang for your buck right now are four plexes.