Happy Landlords -- Hard to Find?

The doom and gloom surrounding the real estate market (and more than a few posts on this blog) leave out a lot of the positive (for some):
* Fewer mortgages mean more renters.
* More renters mean fewer vacancies.
* Fewer vacancies equals higher rents.

Rents have risen nationally over 1% - some areas near 2% (Says Wall Street Journal and Reis, Inc.)

Of course - you have to have a house or apartment someone wants to actually live in to take advantage of this. An additional 1-2% is not going to make most landlords rich however, so you still need a good property manager -- or a working system if you do it yourself.

Rising rents are not helpful to owners who have deferred maintenance & repairs, who have feature-less units (especially to landlords who think things like refrigerators, dishwashers, clothes washers, etc. are optional), or those legions who simply paid too much during market run up and cannot increase rent enough to cover carrying costs.

To those who have units that are tenant-ready, survey your local market and raise those rents!