Apartment Ownership During a Recession?

[Larswin Mendoza]

These questions are aimed at members here who survived as landlords during the most recent Meltdown post-2008. I'm primarily interested in SoCal anecdotes as mine is in San Diego, but would be grateful for ANY shared experience, regardless of location.

What happened to your occupancy rate?

Did your rent rates increase due to higher demand or did they decrease along with all other prices at the time?

Did you have to make any concessions?

Thanks in advance.

[Justin R.]

In the 2008-2010 time I only had two rental units here locally, but did end up with lower lease rates by about 4% compared to pre-2008.  Vacancy times didn't change.  I would NOT extrapolate that out to the market, though - hardly a large enough sample size.

I have a feeling this is fairly neighborhood specific - some areas certainly behaved differently than others during and after the recession.  I saw rent rates rebound (and go far higher much quicker) than the data below shows, so I don't know what to believe here in general:

Real Gross Rent History for San Diego

Date	US Median	California Median	San Diego, CA Median	San Diego, CA Average
2013	$905	$1,224	$1,289	$1,368
2012	$897	$1,218	$1,272	$1,351
2011	$900	$1,213	$1,278	$1,337
2010	$910	$1,238	$1,329	$1,395
2009	$909	$1,247	$1,321	$1,391
2008	$914	$1,260	$1,339	$1,403
2007	$875	$1,196	$1,296	$1,354
2006	$881	$1,189	$1,306	$1,360
2005	$862	$1,152	$1,269	$1,328

 (http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/california/san-d...)