4 ms·

> Any city will have some % of empty rentals, if it didn’t, no one would ever move around. You do understand that people advertise apartments available for ren

> Any city will have some % of empty rentals, if it didn’t, no one would ever move around. You do understand that people advertise apartments available for rent before the previous tenant has moved out... In Québec, the majority of leases end on July 1st and you have a number of people moving on that day which is quite greater than the vacancy rate. You can sign a lease for a new apartment months ahead of time.

flaque 7y ago
> You do understand that people advertise apartments available for rent before the previous tenant has moved out... True, but sometimes people just leave without giving warning, or the next person can't move in immediately. Sometimes, in a limited supply market, the landlord will wait for someone willing to pay a specific price since they know there's no other options. In San Francisco, that's the case for roughly 5% of the units at any given time.
- hcknwscommenter 7y ago
  As a renter who has been casually looking for a bigger place in San Francisco for about a year (I am really picky and have a really nice place), it is my experience that decent units stay listed for at most 2 weeks and unoccupied for about 1 month.
vonmoltke 7y ago
What you describe is not the way the US rental markets I have been in worked. Even the past three properties I bought had been vacant for at least a couple months before I even looked at them, let alone closed the deal. Our current house met the Census definition of vacant for six months after we closed on it so I could do work on it before getting all our stuff in.
pasttense01 7y ago
If the previous tenant had been there a while the landlord is often going to fix it up some--repainting walls, new carpet, new appliances. This takes some time.
- hcknwscommenter 7y ago
  In my building, the landlord takes about a week to repair and repaint before showing the unit.
refurb 7y ago
Landlords will tell you that lining one tenant up after the other is ideal, but always possible. It’s similar to the unemployment rate, we call ~4% unemployment “full employment” since it would be impossible for every single person to have a job in a fluid job market.

flaque 7y ago

> You do understand that people advertise apartments available for rent before the previous tenant has moved out... True, but sometimes people just leave without giving warning, or the next person can't move in immediately. Sometimes, in a limited supply market, the landlord will wait for someone willing to pay a specific price since they know there's no other options. In San Francisco, that's the case for roughly 5% of the units at any given time.

hcknwscommenter 7y ago
As a renter who has been casually looking for a bigger place in San Francisco for about a year (I am really picky and have a really nice place), it is my experience that decent units stay listed for at most 2 weeks and unoccupied for about 1 month.

vonmoltke 7y ago

What you describe is not the way the US rental markets I have been in worked. Even the past three properties I bought had been vacant for at least a couple months before I even looked at them, let alone closed the deal. Our current house met the Census definition of vacant for six months after we closed on it so I could do work on it before getting all our stuff in.

pasttense01 7y ago

If the previous tenant had been there a while the landlord is often going to fix it up some--repainting walls, new carpet, new appliances. This takes some time.

hcknwscommenter 7y ago
In my building, the landlord takes about a week to repair and repaint before showing the unit.

refurb 7y ago

Landlords will tell you that lining one tenant up after the other is ideal, but always possible. It’s similar to the unemployment rate, we call ~4% unemployment “full employment” since it would be impossible for every single person to have a job in a fluid job market.