Property Management Blog

Someone once said, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” In some cases that is absolutely true. Such is the case with the Affordable Housing Act that will be voted on this November. 

California is undoubtedly in a housing crisis. There are more people who are moving here than housing that’s available. This shortage of housing is causing rents to soar, especially in high demand areas like Silicon Valley and coastal communities.

In my small town of Chico, as well as all over California, the rental property market has been on fire.  Currently we have never seen such high rents with such low vacancies. As a matter of fact, I’d be willing to say in our 60-year history, it’s never been quite as good as it is now. Rents are up and vacancies are very low. At the moment, the vacancy rate over our 1,500 local units sits at .56%, and this is after we raised all our rents and built 56 brand new apartments. Pretty amazing!

Chico’s rental market is hot, giving owners the many benefits of raising the rents while the vacancy rate continues to hover around 1%. However, although these market conditions are great for owners, it has made it difficult for renters in the Chico area, causing the income to rent ratio to be less friendly then other markets. Apartment List gave Chico an overall grade of "C" for housing affordability for families.   The local news agency “Action News” just ran an article concerning the rating, included below.

So you have a rental, but aren’t sure what exactly the fair market price is to rent it out? This is a very common issue for people in the rental property management business. Market prices are constantly changing. In order to fill your units, you need to be on top of how quickly rents are rising or dropping and set rental rates that are reflective of the current market. Currently, in our community, the rate to charge for Chico rentals is rising and it’s hard for most owners to keep up with how fast they’re increasing.