Suddenly, renting doesn’t look so bad
When I’m not blogging, I spend a lot of my time covering the residential and commercial real estate industries for a series of trade magazines and newspapers. This month, for a publication called Midwest Real Estate News, I’m working on a feature story about the resilience of multi-family housing. You probably know multi-family housing by its more common name, apartments.
During my interviews, developers and finance companies repeatedly stressed that rental housing has once again become a top option for many. As the housing market continues its free-fall, a growing number of residents who formerly would have been happy to purchase a home are now choosing instead to rent.
The reasons are fairly obvious: Housing prices are declining in many markets across the country. At the same time, unemployment is rising. People know that life today is rather unstable. They’d rather pay rent than purchase a home only to find themselves out of a job and no longer able to afford their monthly mortgage payments.
Then there are the people who still want to buy a house but can’t. They’re finding that as mortgage lenders tighten their regulations, they can’t qualify for the home loans they could have gotten just eight months ago.
Yes, folks, the housing game has changed. There was a time when renting was looked at as the option of last resort. Those days are gone. Today, people are realizing that renting makes sense for a growing number of people.
Let’s hope that when our housing industry does make its inevitable comeback, whether in late 2009, early 2010 or some other later date, that developers don’t once again ignore the apartment option. During the housing boom, developers not only stopped building new apartment communities, they converted existing ones into condo buildings. It was getting to the point where finding a rental apartment in certain markets was almost an impossible task.
