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Rental Housing and Real Estate Market Trends for 2010

Posted on 06. Jan, 2010 by Marc Courtenay in Real Estate

If you thought 2009 was an unforgettable year for real estate, property managers and residents, wait till you see what unfolds in the year ahead. Here are two of the trends.

First and of least significance; when it comes to advertising properties for rent or for sale, the internet will become even more dominant over printed media. For a lot less money, property managers can saturate the internet with their listings. And it’s not the cost savings, it’s also how much can be accomplished.

When property owners and managers advertise on the web they can go into great detail, post many photos and even takes applications on a secure web site. Web sites that offer listings are seeing more traffic than ever. Property managers are also finding that social networking sites, like Facebook, can be another great channel to market vacancies. Here is an informative video interview, posted by RentVine.com, on the topic of advertising vacancies online (link).

The second mega-trend: The worst of the mortgage crisis is ahead of us. How do we know? Just look at the chart below which reflects the number of mortgages that are due for reset in the months ahead. Pay careful attention to the time-line below the chart.

The purple mountain on the left is the sub-prime crisis, which is behind us in 2007 and 2008. The mostly blue mountain on the right is the option-ARM crisis, a two- to three-year mess of resetting adjustable-rate mortgages that lies just around the next bend and could continue through 2012.

Recently I interviewed an individual who services and administers loans that have been sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She asked to remain anonymous. She said that her department and the loan administrators at other lending institutions are being told to delay the foreclosure process until after the first of the year.

As one analyst and editor at investment publisher Stansberry Research recently wrote, “Right now, we’re sitting in the eye of this mortgage hurricane. When we hit the opposite wall early next year, the storm will become deadly all over again. It is safe to assume that a mountain of foreclosed properties will be hitting the markets over the next two years. Nobody can guess where the ‘bottom’ in real estate prices will be but it is apparently hasn’t arrived yet.”

There will be more displaced former homeowners looking for rentals than at any time in history. Perhaps that says it all.

Related Posts
Real Estate Brokers Turn to Managing Properties
The Credit Crisis and Its Impact on Rental Housing
Renting vs. Home Ownership in the Current Market
Top Marketing Trends in 2010 To Help Property Managers Capture More Market Share (Oct. 29 Webinar)
Apartment Vacancies Hit 30-Year High and That Can Be Good News

Tags: internet marketing, investing, Real Estate