How is the rental market in Prince William County?

The rental market is fantastic right now! If you are a landlord, then great......you have lots of options. Be a little open minded. It is definately a Buyer's Market. So if you buy more properties, then great.

If you are a landlord, it is very possible that you will have tenants tracking you down. These prospective tenants may have bad credit. In the past, I would recommend to hold out and wait for stellar credit.......now, be a little more flexible. You may even consider a prospective tenant with bad credit who even lost their home. Just look at the foreclosures - How many of these people lost their home due to predatory lenders. Imagine if your mortgage payment went from 7% up to 9%, 10%, even higher and you could not refinance.

What do you do? I recommend asking the tenant to provide me with a copy of their OLD MORTGAGE statment along with their NEW MORTGAGE statement. If they were paying $1600 per month and that payment quickly rose to $2800 or so.......then you have to consider this tenant. If they were able to make the payment for 3-5 years at $1600 and only to have it jump to $2800, then they could probably handle your rental property at $1600. They proved they could for 3 years. This market has been extremely difficult. You may ask, whey didn't they re-finance......well, they couldn't. Maybe they lost equity (what little they had with no downpayment) and they could not refinance.....so when the payment hit $2800, the ship slowly sank.

Give them a chance, you may ask up to 2 months security deposit. And also ask them to provide you a copy of their credit report which is free on-line. The BRAC jobs should also bring many newcomers to our area.

Our property management division has grown from 40 properties to over 150! And the properties are renting within 30 days.