Seasonal Difficulty Level

[David Roberts]

Hi,

It's october now, school year has started.  Is there more difficulty with finding tenants at certain times of the year than others?  Seems spring/summer would be best, and then fall off toward the holiday season.  

If I were to initiate a purchase of a property right now, then best case I'm looking at right around Thanksgiving time to START finding a tenant.  I wonder if I might want to wait until just after Christmas and hopefully let potential purchases and their prices keep falling.

But, I don't know if this is accurate or not.  Can someone clue me in from their experiences?  I'd hate to have to spend 3 months vacancy just because of the time of year.

[Dan C.]

Yes, that is a very slow time of year for rentals in our climate.  From my experience it does seem to pick up right after New Years.  But between the holidays you just don't have that many people looking.

I personally would not base my purchase decision on that, I think you need to look at it with a more long term perspective.  If a property was available that I believe was the right one I would make an offer regardless of the time of year.