Landlords - Are You Prepared for Massive Vacancy?

[Greg B.]

I have been doing this LL thing for 6 years now. My average annual vacancy rate for my business is around 7%. That is taking all the occupied weeks and dividing by all of the available weeks (X100).

I usually have one or two vacancies a year. No big deal. This year, when school dismissed, I had 5 renters move out at the same time for various reasons. Only one move out was contentious, non-pay, but they did get out. The rest gave notice.

Now, I have never had 5 vacancies at one time and do not, normally, have the staff to get them all ready right away. Most need paint, sprucing up, due to long term occupants. All need more than just a clean up. One needs plumbing work due to pipe corrosion.

We will be OK. I have hired some people to get over this bump and it all should be resolved in about a month. It's just more logistical/management stuff than I have had to handle at one time. Lots of questions to answer every hour.

Also, to ad to the pressure, I have been working on expanding the biz. This challenge allows me to show my investor/partners how this negative situation will be resolved in a timely manner.

My question is, what if it happened to you? Would you be ready for a significant number of vacant units simultaneously?