Compared to last year, does this summer feel like a normal rental market?

We did have quite a bit of rentals but I find myself from the beginning of the pandemic even through now, trying to reinvent everything and recalculate everything because things have changed. So, about how you show properties, how you present them to the public, the online aspect, our problem has been mostly that a lot of people who have been in the investment market particularly for a while have chosen this season to sell their properties and nobody can blame them for that, they’re going to get a whole lot more this year than they would have last year.

But what happens then, when they do that, is that you have a reduction of properties on the market that are available for rent and you have all those people who were living in those properties who still intend to rent looking for a place to live. Plus, you’ve got all the people who generally look for properties when their kids are out of school so that they can move around and get closer to work or maybe they’re working from home now and they can work remotely so you have all these people looking plus, we have a constant influx of people who are selling their properties in California trying to buy here and as we know the buyers market has been particularly tough.

So, some of those people are either building houses or maybe waiting until things settle down to buy something. So, we’ve got a lot of people looking and a reduction of properties so that has kind of created a landlord market in many areas we’re seeing– like maybe one or two properties available. And so, we’ve got multiple applications on those properties and we’re able to get a little bit more rent from them, particularly if they’re in super good shape and they’re pretty ready for a move in because a lot of the people that we get looking have maybe been looking for the last 60 days–when they’ve given their notice or when the landlord told them that they were going to be selling so, we’ve had a really interesting summer.

I think we can see primarily what the new normal will be as we hit next year and maybe things have calmed down a little bit and maybe there won’t be as many people looking. So, I look to then to see you know what the new normal might look like after all this is finished.