Single-Family Rent Growth Levelling Off

From the Seattle Times today, Single-family home rents leveling off — and that could be good for buyers, too.

Now there is finally good news for them after years of steep rent hikes – and there’s a chance that could ultimately help lead to relief in the homebuying market, as well.

Rents in local single-family homes rose a paltry 0.4 percent in February from a year ago, according to a new report from the real-estate data firm CoreLogic.

That’s by far the smallest growth since the company began tracking the data in 2011, and is way down from the average single-family rent hike of 5.8 percent this decade.

With 140,000 single-family homes in Seattle being rented out, this is good news for buyers as when it comes time for leases to be renewed as more landlords will consider selling instead of renewing. It is also good news because they’re less likely to be competing against wanna-be-landlords as with real estate values increasing so much, it is now hard to cash-flow investments with 20% down.

We’ve certainly seen a large number of our real estate agent friends selling their investment property this year, more so than any other year.