Thank you for your service, veterans

Just in time for Memorial Day comes this nice little brief of a story out of the Cincinnati area:

WHIO-TV reported yesterday that Cornerstone Realty in Blue Ash, Ohio is offering free 12-month leases to servicemen and women returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The leases are for two-bedroom apartments in the company's Kettering and Centerville apartment buildings.

The Easy Rent Editor salutes you, Cornerstone Realty!

2007 National Apartment Report now available

Marcus and Millichap, a leading national real estate investment brokerage company, has released its 2007 National Apartment Report, available as a .pdf here.

Highlights include:

◆ The slowdown in the housing market has led to the return of condos to the rental pool, but a temporary increase in competitive stock is not expected to have a significant impact on apartment vacancy. By year-end 2007, overall vacancy is projected to improve 20 basis points to 5.1 percent, compared with a 40 basis point decline in 2006.
◆ Approximately 92,000 units are expected to be completed in 2007, up from 90,000 apartments last year. While this year’s total could come in above expectations if a large number of condo projects come online as rentals, completions would nonetheless fall below levels reported in the 1990s through 2003.
◆ Asking rents are forecast to rise 4.3 percent, while effective rents advance 4.8 percent. Concessions have declined dramatically in many markets over the past two years, leaving less room for improvement in 2007.

The report also includes market outlooks for individual cities, but unfortunately no Northwest Ohio cities are big enough to make the study's cut. Closest cities profiled are Cleveland, Columbus and Detroit.

Rental News Roundup

The Easy Rent Editor has had her hands full!

I've been doing some other writing, and also some part-time assistant property management -- yay! gigs! -- great for me, but not so great for the blog.

So, here, a round-up of recent stories that may interest Northwest Ohio landlords and tenants:

Searching for an apartment for the first time or need a refresher course on the finer points of landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities? Check out UWeekly's Make Yourself a Home: Renter's Guide, published this week.

If you like your apartment-hunting advice in shorter, bulleted form, see Yahoo Finance's Eight Tips for Finding Deals in a Tight Apartment Market.

Via PR Newswire, Tip-Mart Inc. has announced a new landlord and tenant online screening tool, RenterQ. Registration is free. The site does not complete background or credit checks, but is instead a rating system for both landlords and tenants. Registered users can access other users' records, eliminating the need for tenant history faxes between landlords and allowing prospective tenants to see the feedback past tenants have left for their landlords.

New loft-style apartments just a hop, skip and a jump to our north in Monroe, Michigan, earned themselves a nice writeup at Monroenews.com. The article states the apartments "seem more suited to big-city Chicago than to Monroe." Well, then!