The Albuquerque rental market: Is it as hot as its purchase market?
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Tracy:
Next topic. Tego. Let’s talk about rentals.
Tego:
Yeah. Let’s talk about rentals and I’m gonna, this is going to, I’ve got two subjects here that kind of talk about rentals and then also the other side of it, the in real estate investing, but let’s talk about the rental market. Um, Tracy, you and I, obviously we own rental properties here, here, here in town and elsewhere. Um, and, and I can just say the rental market for Albuquerque is pretty crazy. It’s, you know, we talk about the resale market and we just had this conversation about home selling for above list price. Well, the, the rental market is just as nutty in many ways.
Tego:
I Should probably turn off my cell phone on the radio.
Tracy:
One of the things you know, that we really want to get to when we talk about rentals, besides that rents have gone up is I just had this conversation this week too, with somebody they called. And they’re not sure if they are going to be able to qualify for a loan for a house that they want. And so they said, you know, I may need to rent. And so I was warning them to be really careful about rental scams, because they’re still out there in full force. Right?
Tego:
Let’s talk about that. But before we do, I want to just say the rental market is extremely tight. Meaning when, when a good rental property comes on the market or in many cases, any rental property comes on the market. There are people out there waiting, and there’s usually a frenzy of people trying to get that property. So not the same as in a sale is like a bidding war, but basically it’s an application where people putting in applications and saying, I’ll pay more deposit or I’ll even pay more rent. We’re seeing some of that because of the fact that people are so desperate to find a property. Unfortunately, the scammers are taking advantage
Tracy:
Of that. They really are.
Tego:
And So tell us some of the common scams out there, if you’re a renter looking for a place to rent things to watch. Sure.
Tracy:
So if the rent seems too low for the property, it probably isn’t a real property manager, um, depends on where you find it. But a lot of those like Craigslist type, um, online,
Tego:
Any, any place that allows somebody to post an advertisement for a property for rent that doesn’t cost that person to post that property should be red flag city beware be very careful. So things like Craigslist, Facebook ads, uh, you know, uh, offer up. I don’t think offer up actually does rentals do they? But anyway, you know what I’m talking about. So it’s any of those type of, you know, online bulletin boards where you can post things for rent. And if, if somebody can literally go in there, create a fake profile, go grab some photos of maybe a homeless listed for sale or a homeless listed for rent posted on there. They can be totally anonymous cause they can just create a fake email address. Right? You just got to understand it’s really not that hard for somebody to create a fake home for rent lists,
Tracy:
Right? So a lot of other red flags, right? So besides maybe a low price, some sort of hardship, why they need to rent it quick, why it’s lower price. They’re just looking for a good family. We had to leave the country or we had to leave. And the house is, you know, available. We just want a good family, why they can’t meet you. But you know, they’ve changed some Tego. Some, some people now will actually meet and give keys. They sometimes we’ve seen where they’ve read Kita house. They take your first month, your last month and you never hear from them again. So be really careful. You know, the multiple listing service allows us to put rentals on there. And I’m not, not that many are on our multiple listing service, but they have to go on by a realtor.
Tego:
What, one of the other, the other red flags just real quick. And then I want to talk about, okay, where, where can people go that are looking for things to rent? Where can they go to find stuff? So, so first off, one of the other red flags, if you go to the house and it has a for sale sign out front, because I, over the years, Tracy, how many times have we had people calling us that, that went up to a house we have listed for sale and said, I was going to rent this. Somebody said this was for rent and or the quote, the air quote owner said, this was for rent. And they drive up and they have our sign out front. Right.
Tracy:
And honestly, Tego, I’ve seen those online for rents. And it says, please ignore the for sale sign out front because the don’t tell them, don’t tell the realtor that I’m also trying to rent it. Yeah. They’re sneaky.
Tego:
Let’s be honest. These are awful people taking advantage of people that are, that are just trying to find a place. Right.
Tracy:
So there are rent to own legitimate rent to own options out there that we’ve talked about before. But let’s talk about rents.
Tego:
Yeah. Let’s talk about where can people go to know that they’re getting a legitimate home for rent and you talked about the, the
Tracy:
MLS, but the other ones you can Google Albuquerque property management and find legitimate property managers here in Albuquerque. We’ve got Maddix, we’ve got sky, we’ve got Tyson, we’ve got AME, all sorts of property managers and just go direct to them, find out. And especially if you don’t know parts of town, they can help orient you to what parts of town. Um, we were not property managers, but we can help facilitate getting you to property managers, but it’s basically that list.
Tego:
So going to the source, going actually to a legitimate property management company, um, you know, there, there are ways that you can interact directly with a property owner and let’s be real. I mean, there’s a lot of small like us, uh, landlords that own a few properties that are, you know, that don’t hire a property management company to take care of the property form. So, you know, you just have to have your, have your spidey sense up, you know, just if it doesn’t sound right, then maybe it isn’t
Tracy:
Right in. So Tego, I have a question for you. If you find it for rent on Zillow or Trulia, do you think it’s possible to be legitimate or not pretty
Tego:
Good chance that those are legitimate? And the reason is Zillow slash Trulia with the same, same company, they actually charge a, I don’t remember, 30, 40, 50 bucks for, uh, somebody to list a rental property for sale. It’s exactly why it’s one of the reasons I shouldn’t say the only reason, but that’s one of the reasons ELO started to charge property owners and landlords was to weed out the, the scammers that were just posting things up there doesn’t mean it. Some scammer wouldn’t be my wine, mine, you know, paying the money to do it. If they think it’s going to pay off, but usually scammers aren’t willing to pay.
Tracy:
So Tega, what’s happened to rental rates in the past year. Well, that’s
Tego:
A great question because you know, we talk about the Albuquerque real estate sale market. We’ve seen anywhere 14, 15, 13% somewhere in there. It’s really hard to tell, but we’ve seen really big price appreciation in home sale prices
Tracy:
Over the past year, over the past year.
Tego:
And that’s annualized, thank you, rent. Same. It’s almost identical. It’s actually maybe even a little more 14, 15%. Every person that I know that owns rentals or the property manager is just everybody is like, I can’t believe what things are renting for today. And of course, anybody looking for a place to rent is probably saying the same thing going, I can’t believe what things are renting for today. Just because the market is very tight. We do have people moving into the city into the, you know, the Metro Albuquerque area that, you know, it’s, it it’s this whole, you know, snowball thing, right? We, we don’t have enough homes for people to buy. They got to live somewhere. So the rental, so it’s driving both. We just have more people than we have places for them to live in the Albuquerque area. And that’s going to drive prices up on both resale and rent. Right. And in my humble opinion, don’t see it slowing down.