Do I absolutely need to reduce my rent during slow season?

[Brian C.]

Hi everyone,

I just recently bought a condo and would like to put it on the market for rent soon. I had a discussion with my agent about what rent to charge. He was trying to convince me that because December is usually the slow rental season due to the holidays, I would face a lot of challenges finding a tenant if I don't lower my rent. Not that I don't trust my agent (he is a nice guy), but when I was buying, he kept telling me all these good things about the property and that I would have to go above the seller's asking price to win (I ended up going below by $10k and still made the deal.) Now I am about to rent it out and he started telling me all these negative factors and that I would have to charge less than normal in order to be competitive. I am not asking for a unrealistic amount since I already did a lot of analysis myself on what is currently available and how much similar units were rented out in the past three months in my area. My thinking is that you can't analyze the market by only looking at the demand but not the supply. You may get a lot more demand during the hot season, but you also get a lot of competitors which creates pressure on how much you can actually charge. Whereas during the slow season fewer people are moving, but the supply is also very low. When we looked at the database together, the inventory for my area is low and there is really not any units out there right now that are identical to mine. In this case, do I absolutely have to reduce rent just because the market is slowing down? My concern is that if I sign a 1-year lease now, I'm gonna have the same issue every year when the lease is up and if the tenant doesn't renew. I'm kind of stuck in this slow season because I bought the property at this time of the year?

If anyone can provide any insight or past experience on this it will be greatly appreciated.

(My property is located in the NYC metro area so there are usually lots of rental activities. My unit is a small apartment in a new building with 24hr-doorman, parking, gym, pool, etc. The only competing unit in this area now is an apartment of similar size in a 30-year old building with a small gym but nothing else. However, that unit is 8 min closer to the subway station by walk than my unit. My agent told me to charge just $50 higher and my unit will be a much better deal. However, during normal time, the rent for my unit is at least $100 to $150 higher than the other unit because they are actually not that similar and don't really target the same kind of tenants.)