Have you heard the news? Pending home sales were up in December ‘08. Could this be the Phoenix rising from the ashes of our current real estate market? I know a lot of economists hope to use this data to show a bottom in the market. Unfortunately, it’s more like the groundhog peeking out of his hole wondering if he’ll see his shadow. Regrettably we’ll still see a lot of mortgage resets in ‘09 which will keep downward pressure on the current real estate market as more properties fall into foreclosure. Looks like 6 more weeks of winter.

Instead of regurgitating what the nation media has already reported I thought I’d go a little deeper and comb through the census data to see how this is affecting the Boston Rental Market. Traditionally when home sales are up it means vacancy rates for rentals are up as well. People are moving out of rentals to buy homes. This causes landlords to either lower rents or offer rental incentives to keep or attract tenants.

Thankfully, I can’t believe I am saying this, due to tough development laws and lack of buildable land in the Northeast, the vacancy rate in our neck of the woods has gone down. You read that right; comparing Q4 ‘07 with Q4 ‘08 the vacancy rate in the Northeast dropped .3% to 6.3% vacancy in ‘08 compared with 6.6% vacancy in ‘07.

Our winters may be cold and our summers short but at least here in the northeast we aren’t breaking our backs to keep our tenants happy and the bank trying to fill vacant units. I hope this helps as you all build up your rental portfolio’s.

To see the complete U.S Census Data – click here.

Filed under: Boston Real Estate Trends and Statistics