According to the Kansas City Star, residents in the city’s metropolitan area are increasingly choosing to rent, rather than own homes.

Rents have risen and construction of new rental units is up, the news source reports, to meet the desires of a population who are largely renters by choice. One renter noted it made no sense to buy since he was uncertain how many years he would stay in the city.

One area brokerage manager stated that the long-term commitment a mortgage may require is a major factor, also citing efforts by rental managers and owners to offer higher-quality properties with more amenities, better appliances and furnishings, or other perks.

Another expert told the source that the current single-family housing market has caused people to rethink homeownership, and many have decided they do not want to pursue it. While he said the housing market will likely recover in time, this attitude shift may be an opportunity for investors willing to rent a home to give residents the best of both worlds, allowing them to live in a single-family property without being tied to it long-term.

Property managers or owners with a temporarily vacant property might be wise to take steps so that it does not appear obviously empty, which in turn can discourage unwanted guests.

MainStreet notes that it is possible to reduce the risk of vandalism and theft with fairly simple steps. They will not eliminate the chance completely, but safety can be improved and cleanliness can be maintained.

Keeping the property in good condition tends to give the impression it is occupied, or at least visited frequently. As a result, people who do not want to be found are less likely to stay there. Since this makes the property more appealing to potential renters, this effort will not be wasted either way.

Put lights on timers will also help deter undesirable guests, helping to make the home look occupied.?Also consider using the blinds. According to the source, one method is to leave bottom blinds closed, so no one can see in, while higher blinds remain open. This may give the impression that the home is occupied, but residents are upstairs.

Beyond that, owners and managers should be careful how much information they make easily accessible through advertising.

Property managers may want to step up their efforts to retain tenants, given the results of a recent survey.

Research by Kingsley Associates indicates that the number of renters choosing to renew their leases dropped to a three-year low in the fourth quarter of 2011, though analysts suggest tenant satisfaction with current rental properties was stable during the period.

“As renters themselves recover, there are indications that more of them are renting by choice,” said Kingsley Associates principal John Falco. “They aren’t unhappy – just choosy.”

Tenant satisfaction dropped only 0.1 percent from the previous quarter, according to researchers, and has been stable for three consecutive periods now. This suggests that owners and property management companies are not driving tenants away.

According to the report, 32 percent of surveyed renters had incomes of at least $75,000, higher than the 30.7 percent with incomes of less than $40,000. This result reportedly represents a deviation from recent years.

The number of renters 55 or more years old also increased to 13.4 percent from 12.6 percent in the period ending in the second quarter. The number of residents who live alone grew more than 2 percentage points, reaching 45.9 percent of those surveyed.

Multifamily Executive reports that data from sources (including rental data firms MPF Research and RealFacts) suggests rental managers may need to stop increasing rents soon.

Property management companies and rental owners increased rents an average of 2.3 and 4.7 percent during 2010 and 2011, MFE notes, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics only reported 2 percent growth in wages year-over-year during the third quarter of last year.

This suggests rents may significantly outpace wage growth, analysts say, threatening to price residents out of their units. Data from RealFacts suggests this may be happening in some markets already, according to MFE, with one executive reporting that more tenants are moving out due to rent increases than in the past.

While rents did drop in some areas during the fourth quarter of 2011, however, the source notes that it is traditionally a slow quarter and may not be representative of a meaningful trend.

MPF Research’s Greg Willett noted that eventually, rent increases may cause tenants to feel they can no longer afford a property. Analysts question when that point will be reached, according to the source, although some signs indicate that wages may rise moe quickly this year than in 2011.

Bedbugs are a growing problem in the Chicago area, according to the Chicago Reader, and may be in the state and the nation as a whole as well.

The pests seem to have re-emerged in the past decade, the source reports, after being rare since the invention and use of DDT and other pesticides in the 1940s. The banning of DDT may have contributed to the problem and some suggest international travel and an improved resistance to pesticides as possible contributing factors.

According to the 2011 Bugs Without Borders Survey by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky, 99 percent of more than 1,000 pest control companies in the nation encountered a bedbug infestation within the year leading up to the survey. A decade earlier, the same survey found only 11 percent reported finding one.

One thing that makes dealing with bedbugs difficult, according to the source, is that federal, state and local laws do not generally describe landlord and tenant responsibilities. Rental property management firms, landlords and tenants may be unable to determine who is responsible for bringing them into a property.

An Illinois Department of Public Health’s Structural Pest Control Advisory Council subcommittee considering the issue recently suggested that tenants be responsible for reporting the problem and landlords be tasked with exterminating the creatures.

Though there are arguably several top-notch ways to market rental properties, multifamily marketing consultant Kate Good states social media is the chief tool property management companies and other industry members should be utilizing to get word out about their residences.

Good divulged some expert marketing tips during a webcast sponsored by Multifamily Insiders, according to Multi-Housing News, much of which related to the necessary adaptation to social media this year.

One premier way in which property managers and owners can market their units and convert leads into tenants is staying tuned in to the conversation online, particularly on the most popular social media sites – Facebook and Twitter.

“Make sure you know what’s being said – reputation is everything right now,” said Good, according to MHN.

Aside from social media, though, Good added that a significant amount of time should be spent with more traditional marketing outlets, such as press releases.

With budgets tightening for many apartment industry members this year, ensuring you’re implementing the right marketing strategy should be a main priority.

There are two factors that are currently plaguing the housing market and ultimately hampering the economy as a whole. The first is clearly an excess in supply of owner-occupied housing. Excess supply leads to a reduction in housing values as there is underutilized capacity. Second, there is a serious problem with “negative equity” in the homes that are currently owned. This is the classic case of the underwater mortgage that is so prevalent in America right now. Peter Orszag, former CBO and OMB Director in the Obama Administration, says, “Dealing with excess inventory by shifting vacant properties into the rental market would help to stabilize prices and thereby mitigate, to some degree, the negative equity issue.”

A novel way to stimulate demand for home purchases proposed by Kyle Jividien of Alamo Appraisal Group in San Antonio and economist William Wheaton of MIT among others would be to “provide a tax write-off to investors who buy vacant houses and rent them out.” The catch here is that investors would have to hold on to the properties as rentals for an extended period of time. Fostering this kind of investor behavior will most likely spur demand for the rental market and encourage the use of professional property managers. This type of creativity that seeks to incentivize investors is what the economy needs right now.

You can read more about this here: Peter Orszag’s article on Bloomberg.

Heavy is the Crown Estate

England’s Royal Family has a rather confusing arrangement with the parliamentary government, which sometimes blurs the line between public and private land. Ask British citizens who owns a popular building such as Buckingham Palace, and you.re likely to get several answers, some of which aren’t family friendly.

The confusion primarily arises from the arrangement between Parliament and the Royal Family. The Crown Estate, for instance, is a portfolio of properties “owned” by the Crown.

The word owned comes in quotations because the Royal Family cannot sell the property, nor does any revenue created by the property go directly to the Royal Family. That’s not exactly the type of ownership people think of first.

The Crown Estate basically acts as a property management corporation that oversees the lands and buildings in the portfolio. The portfolio earns 210 million pounds a year. That money does not go to the Royal Family, but rather to Her Majesty’s Treasury.

Americans probably think that sounds an awful lot like money going to the Queen. The HM Treasury, however, is actually a part of the federal government that deals with economic policy and public finance.

Other complications arise when one considers that the Royal Family definitely owns certain properties (Buckingham Palace being one famous example), yet does not have any legal connection to other properties that seem linked to the Royals (the Royal Family, for example, does not own the Tower of London).

It’s a complicated mess that confuses British citizens and court systems. Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand the arrangement. People have been confused since the 1700s, when the monarchy first handed over a sizeable chunk of its property to Parliament.

Al Nahyan’s Property Management in Brazil

When you?re the royal family in an exuberantly wealthy location such as Abu Dhabi, you have enough money to invest in property around the world. Recently, the Al Nahyan family started investing in Brazilian real estate through the property management company Bracor.

The Al Nahyan family does their business through a company called Royal Group. They not only spend billions of dollars on property, but also media, technology, and international trade.

Other companies partnering with Bracor include Morgan Stanley Real Estate, Olayan Group, and W. R. Berdley Corporation. These major players in world property development, so you know that they have access to information that common people would drool over.

The Kennedy Compound

The Kennedy family has a history of political involvement and humanitarian action that makes it the closest thing that the U.S. will ever have to a royal family. The Kennedy Compound is a six acre property on Cape Cod’s waterfront, and has a main house with two guest houses.

The Kennedy grounds hold a swimming pool, boat house, tennis court, and other amenities that make most luxury hotels look like tenements. What kind of property management companies manage the Kennedy Compound? ?That’s another way that the Kennedys resemble a royal family: it’s incredibly difficult to find information about them.

Rumor has it that the estate is owned by several individuals. Currently, no one has permanent residence at the Kennedy Compound. Ted Kennedy and his wife were the last official residents, until his death in 2009. There has been talk of turning the Kennedy Compound into a museum or educational center. Currently, the compound is listed as a historic site by the National Park Service.

CONCLUSION

The richest family in your town probably doesn’t have enough money to compete with these royal (and semi-royal) families. Unless, of course, one of these families lives in your city.

The typical property management company, therefore, doesn’t usually deal with billions of dollars in assets for a single group. They certainly don’t have a quasi-public, quasi-private arrangement like the Crown Estate.

Considering the complicated issues that can arise from owning endless acres of property, perhaps average people, the non-royals, should consider themselves lucky. Even when you have companies handle the business end of property for you, who wants to think about cutting all of that grass?

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

While south Florida is still seeing problems with its housing market, the Panhandle area is seeing both a large number of foreclosures and a large number of sales. Naturally, the foreclosures are bad for sellers and good for buyers. They’re helping to keep the home prices down, and that’s allowing buyers to purchase more home than they would have otherwise been able to afford. It’s also helping buyers by giving them more to choose from, and allowing them to buy in neighborhoods where they couldn’t afford to buy a home even last year.

Florida Panhandle counties are seeing great increases – in the 40% to 60% more range – in the number of houses that are being sold in 2011. Of course, it’s early yet and there could still be problems that occur. There are no guarantees as to whether the increase in home sales will continue or whether it will spread to others areas, but it’s definitely an encouraging sign in a time where there has been very little good news available for home buyers. It’s still very important to have good credit and a down payment, though, because lenders are still a bit shy about handing over money. They got burned by a lot of people in the past, and they’re being much more careful about who they loan money to. That’s hurting buyers who have had a home foreclosed on and who are trying to buy something cheaper in another area of the country.

No matter where people want to move to, though, they shouldn’t give up on finding a home. Even if they need to rent for a little while before their credit is good enough to buy again, it’s important that they decide where they want to live and make an effort to get there. It gives them something to work toward.

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When you have a rental property, one of the things you’ll want to do is be sure to get good tenants in it. That’s true whether it’s a house, an apartment, or a business, because it’s always a good idea to be sure that people you can trust are renting from you. You don’t want to get people in there who will tear up the place and/or who won’t pay their rent on time. Some tenants can do real damage to a place, but you shouldn’t be afraid to be a property owner – you just need the right tenants. Getting a property management company to help you is one of the best ways to get good people into your rental, too, because you’ll have knowledgeable people helping you select who you should rent to.

The more you learn about being a property owner, even if you plan on letting a property management company handle things, the better off you’ll be when it comes to ensuring that you find the right people to rent from you. Make sure you get a good deposit, and that your renters are aware of any specific rules you have – like no smoking and no pets, for example. You should also collect the first and last month’s rent, just in case your renters skip out or don’t pay.

Of course, you also have to understand your responsibilities to your tenants, and you can’t just do anything you like because you’re the property owner. Being fair with your tenants will help them to be fair (and honest) with you. In short, it’s a two-sided relationship and both sides have to be willing to work together or the landlord-tenant contract won’t be a successful one. You can make it successful by finding the right tenants and taking care to see how the property is being managed.