Time to travel to your markets. Planes are safe, businesses are opening, and except for some late-winter snows and storms, the coast is clear. I have spent some time in recent weeks making site visits to properties I’m interested in. One in particular was right after the big freeze that swept through south-central U.S. I could see how well some property managers responded and how some did not. Very informative. If you’re a tenant in one of those properties and the snow or snow-melt, garbage pileups, roof leaks, and huge lakes in the middle of your parking lots became part

What does late winter, early spring mean to apartment owners? Time for optimism? Turning over a new leaf? I have seen three major events I can consistently look forward to each year at this time. Landscape improvements is one. Planting flowers and bushes and refreshing beauty bark, pool preparation. Maybe not in February but it might be time to get these jobs on your vendors’ schedules. Another is owners pulling the trigger on selling their property. It’s mainly a psychological trigger. There is nothing magical about the January/February time frame that makes this the best time to sell property, but

December always seems to be a time of waiting. Whatever happened during the year, we think it will change in January. This year many of us have that feeling even stronger than in the past. New election, vaccine, end of eviction moratorium. Come on January, February, March, we need the changes you’re bringing. Don’t extend that eviction moratorium, don’t delay those vaccines. Oh yes, and one more thing: property owners, we need you to put your properties up for sale, at reasonable prices! Well we can wish for it anyway. The optimists are saying once a certain critical mass of

Are you seeing more properties become available? We have, and it is encouraging. Owners still want more than the properties are worth, but with options come opportunities. Love it! A little bit of improvement in clarity on the future after an election helps, and a feeling of plans put on hold for too long helps too. Throughout this pandemic, even the year or two prior, we have heard brokers tell us over and over that nothing hits the market, it’s bought up before anyone even knows about it. And all of the value-add properties have been bought and renovated. Nothing

This has to be one of the most unique time periods we’ve experienced for real estate investing. So many events are swirling around us now, coming together in the next few months. We have an election that may radically transform the way we do business. A virus pandemic that will come to an end soon with a vaccine. Or not. An economy that until eight months ago was on a tear, then dropped faster than we’ve seen before, and is now climbing back to the growth, unemployment, and stock market levels we had before the drop. And interest rates that

Six months ago we thought the pandemic would be mostly gone. Summer weather would mean we’re outside and not spreading the virus, medical research would produce a remedy, and we would all have changed our behaviors to prevent the spread. State and local governments restricted evictions but Fannie and Freddie offered borrowers forbearance. Once we looked that new word up, we decided maybe it wasn’t such a great offer. Today the picture continues to be muddy. The short term mortgage relief offered in forbearance will come due shortly, the CDC stepped up restrictions on evictions at a national level, and