Offers came in and she agreed to sell it for $240,000, but when negotiations dragged on she decided to walk away. Why not? Within weeks she had a tenant who paid $1,900, enough to cover her expenses, and she plans to re-list when prices are higher. Meanwhile, she’s collecting rent checks.
“I’m not going to take a concession when it has a higher return than renting,” she said.
Decisions like Ms. Alam’s have become so common that Redfin recently launched a new service for owners to list their homes for sale – or in addition – for rent. Historically, Mr. Kelman said, real estate agents weren’t very interested in rentals, which received far less commission than sales. But so many potential sellers are choosing to rent out their homes right now that agents worry they’ll lose their clients if they aren’t able to help them.
“Now they are clamoring for it,” Mr. Kelman said. “Some of our most experienced agents are saying, ‘I need to do this now.’”
Understand Inflation and How It Affects You
Investors are doing similar calculations on a much larger scale.
Doug Brien was part of a wave of new buyers who built an empire renting out tens of thousands of homes in the years following the housing bust, when prices were still depressed. His company, Waypoint Homes, is one of several large investors such as Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent that have consolidated the single-family rental business, which until the Great Recession was limited to investors with property assets.
Mr. Bryan, who is a retired NFL kicker, left Waypoint in 2016 and is now chief executive officer of Mind, an investment management company that looks for ways for investors to buy and operate rental properties without having to deal with finding tenants. Presents himself as handling repairs.
“We are unlocking this asset class for others,” Mr. Bryan said.
Carly Lavrin, a self-employed accountant living in Melissa, Texas, is one of them. Ms Lovrin and her husband own two rental homes that they manage through Mynd – investments she said she would never have bought if she had to run the business herself.
“We liked the idea of investing in real estate,” she said. “But when it came to finding tenants, how to manage tenants, advertising and, God forbid, if we had to do some sort of eviction or anything like that – that was outside our realm of expertise.”
