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What is your average length of lease per rental?
Curious if anyone tracks this? I have averaged 2 years but had one recently a 13 months. Been doing this landlord thing for 4 years.
I would kill to have one for longer than 2 years!
Many landlords have the theory that a lease only obligates the landlord as the tenant is not worth pursuing if they default. 2 years is a long time to lock in a bad tenant.
We just had one who wanted 4 years.
It's a Military assignment so they needed proof of same for various reasons.
So we gave it to them otherwise I only do M2M Rental Agreements.
Most of the SFH's we rent last 2-3 years as rents are high.
I write one year leases on my single family homes and month to month leases on my apartments. I have more trouble with the apartment renters and often want them out so I like to have the ability to end the agreement if they give me trouble. I generally don't have an issue with the people that rent houses from me and they tend to abide by the terms of the lease and not split early like many of those in apartments are more willing to do. My average renter in a SFH stays about 3 years vs 1 year in the apartments (some 3 years, some 3 months).
I may have misunderstood your post. My understanding is you are trying to reduce the amount of tenant rollover.
If I understood your post correctly, to reduce tenant rollover and having to go through the process of qualifying new UNKNOWN tenants, be more in tuned with your target market’s desires and needs. If you meet their expectations, they have no reason to move. If you present the best living conditions at a great value, they will not even think of checking out the competition.
Two added benefits, they will probably be better payers and will take better care of the property because this is their valuable home.
If you are worried about the term length of the lease (more than 1 year), the longer the better. A multi-year lease is extremely desirable. A well-written lease agreement provides resolutions for any perceived problem or one that does arise and cannot be resolved. A well-written agreement will have language in the agreement where the agreement can be legally terminated and the parties move on. However, seeking a resolution is a much better option. Seeking resolution can turn a bad situation into the best tenant you will ever have.
from my experience in renting apartments from landlords kind of depends on where your place is located. right now I live in a college community and they do semester deals. when I was in vernal UT it was an oilfield community and they usually did 6 months to a year with a high deposit. allot of times people would pay the deposit and move to north decoda for a better job and the land Lord would keep the deposit. they tried the high deposit so people would stay and keep renting. when I moved back to the city most leases are about a year. but I think it's all about where your located and what class of people your renting to. try and see what others are doing around you. hope that helped.
I like tenants who stay long term. What I have found is if they have moved every year in their past, they will probably only stay a year. If they have lived in their past rentals for long periods of time, they will probably stay if you keep them happy. These are the people I like to rent to. I have a guy who's been renting since 2002. He will leave in a bag.
I really like the long term tenants I have in houses I purchased at the bottom. For example, I bought a house in 2009 and the original tenants are still there. If I add up all of their rent payments then subtract the purchase price, repairs, taxes, and insurance, I've gotten all my money back plus $10,500. I could probably sell that house for $45K. They basically bought me a house and then some.
My average stay is probably 3-4 years. I give them incentives to stay.
The shortest I had was a month. The day after they moved in, they found their "dream house" and gave me 30 days notice. I haven't done a month to month lease since and will never do one again.
There was a story in the paper here a year or so ago about a gentleman who had been renting the same apartment for just shy of 35 years at the time of his passing - the building had been through three different owners during his stay.
I'm looking at a building now where one tenant has been there for 22-years (and two owners), but the current owner has asked her to leave - tentatively because she wants to freshen the unit before the sale. I expressed that I thought it short sighted to ask her to leave as the on-bedroom apartment is small with an exceptionally small bedroom and will be difficult to rent.
Some people are creatures of habit and resist change. I once had an old man who was retiring call me to buy his rental. He was leaving town and wanted $10,000 for a house that was rented for $500 per month to the same guy for 13+ years. He told me the tenant was strange and would only pay the rent in person and give a personal check for $150 along with seven $50 bills. I kept this house for 30 months while the guy paid me every month like clockwork in the same weird manner. He finally bought his own house and asked if his adult kids could stay. I didn't like the looks of them and sold the house to an investor I knew for $30K. All in all, it was a good deal for me. If this tenant would have bought his own house instead of renting for all that time, he could have saved so much money. I don't get it, but to each his own.
i have recently liked getting the shot sales and foreclosure renters. as we kknow, they cant get an fha loan for@ least 3 years. i had a nice couple with a toddler take a home i bought in march. it was great. they bought in 2007 and could no longer afford the house so they were in the process of short selling it.the beauty of it all is they could move in whenever i was done with the village inspections. after 6 inspections, 4 permits, and a partridge in a pear tree, they moved in.
I have one tenant that has been renting the same house for 25 years, I have only owned it for the last 2. She's been through 3 landlords and the last was in foreclosure but she kept paying the rent every month even though nothing got fixed anymore because she didn't want to lose the house. I bought it as a short sale shortly before it was scheduled to go to sale and was able to keep her in the house. She's 68 and was terrified about what was going to happen because she's on social security and can only afford $600/month and couldn't really afford to move. Market rent on the house is probably $700-725 but I agreed to keep it at $600 for her so she could afford to pay every month and she plans on staying there until she dies so it should work out for everybody.
It has been my experience that that nicer the house the longer the tenant wants to stay. I have a house currently rented for $2,200 the guy has been in for 2 years and asked to stay another 2. I have one for $1,300 a month that seems to turn over year to 1.5 years and then townhouses that rent for $600 that turn over often. It seems like I always have a vacancy in one of the townhouses. The single families rent immediately.
I have been either very lucky or good. In my almost seven years I have never had to do an eviction. I have asked people to move 3 times. The first one was when I was really green and they were in and out in 3-4 months. Another one was with me for 2 years and at first it was just the girl and then father moved in, then boyfriend then brother and it was just too many people. And right now, I have a girl moving because she could not maintain the property correctly and had rent timeliness issues as well. The only other people that left, bought a house and another that married the neighbor and moved next door. Otherwise I have found that if I have good communication I have been able to demand good rent, improve the properties and maintain low vacanies.
I bought two duplexes in 2010 with tenants in place and they are all still there with much improved properties and much improved rents that reflect that. At the end of the day this is a service industry. I have found if I serve people well they will stay. I will not add bedrooms to accomodate or allow them to not maintain their interior or exterior responsibilities and that is what leads people to leave for me.
I try to get my new tenants to sign a 2 year lease when they first move in, and this has worked out well. I only have one property that turns over every year, and that is because I mainly have military tenants attending school for a year, then leaving. I did have one set of tenants who wanted to sign a five year lease. At first I regretted that one because they had lots of annoying requests/complaints at first, but they eventually fell in line and have been pretty good since then. I find my tenants to be mainly be respectful, law abiding citizens who try to honor their commitments.
Average for 5 units is 7.2 yrs.
Have been buying a few properties a year for 10 years... As the company matures so do the tenant lengths of stay. Longest is 6 years, shortest are houses purchased this spring that have new tenants. Average over life of company for mature properties is 2-3 years.
In the 3 years that I've owned the 7 apartments I have, my average is 16 months. I had one nasty eviction but otherwise I've had good tenants.
I sign 1 year leases then go month to month unless they really want another year's lease.