One of the most common inquires from renters is “would the sellers be interested in renting their home?”

The short answer to this question is almost always no. There are a lot of reasons for this. The most common reason sellers don’t want to rent their home is they just can’t. The numbers don’t work for them. Although there are many second homes in the Denver Foothills most of our home owners still need the capital from their current home to put down as a down payment on their next home. Not everyone has over a hundred thousand to put into a home without selling their current home. If a seller has lived in their home for 5 years in the Denver Foothills, especially Evergreen, they have a good deal of equity in their home (as long as they haven’t taken it out). That is another point, some people that live above their means may have taken out second mortgages and they need to get the money out of the sale.

Sellers are aware of the Denver Foothills rental market

The rental market in Evergreen and the Denver Foothills is just as low in inventory as the existing home sales market. Sellers are very well aware of the amount they can get if they rented their home as apposed to selling it outright. They have crunched the numbers prior to listing their home. In their minds the numbers work best if they sell their home outright. The amount sellers will get per month is not as appealing to them as the lump sum they can get for an outright sale.

Sellers might not want to rent their home because of the ware and tear

Some people just don’t want to be landlords. Being a landlord is not on a lot of peoples wish list for careers. It does take more work than most people know to be a landlord. It isn’t just as simple as putting an ad on craigslist and collecting a check every month. There is maintenance, renters that don’t care about the property because they only have a security deposit as an investment and the fact that you will need to take them to court if they destroy your home or don’t pay rent on time. There are a great deal of headaches involved in renting a home and being a landlord.

What if it is a buyers market?

When the market is a sellers’ market you really don’t have much of a chance to convince a seller to rent you their home or even do a lease to own option. When our average days for a home to be on the market is around 30 days (luxury homes in the Denver Foothills stick on the market a bit longer), most sellers don’t have time to even consider renting their home. It all happens so fast they don’t feel the overwhelming feeling that their home will never sell. On the flop side in a buyers market just the opposite occurs. They have their home sitting on the market for months and they feel they will never sell it. They start to think of plan B. They easiest and most common plan B is to rent their home. They like this option because it will affect their debt to income ratio and help them afford the second home. This is usually only considered in a buyers market.