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How Long Will It Take To Rent My House/Condo/Apartment?

Written By: Jeff Gilbert

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A question I receive all the time is, “How long on average will it take to rent my house/condo or apartment?”

The best answer I can give is, it depends, but I promise to break it down and give you my best estimate at the bottom so keep on reading for the best answer to this often-asked question.

It depends on a few different factors:

  • Type of property
  • Location
  • Asking rent
  • Property attributes
  • Time of year
  • Market conditions

And in some cases, even more.

Let’s break down a few of them in some more detail.

Type of Property –

In most larger centres, such as the area’s we cover, Barrie or Orillia, even Midland and Wasaga Beach to an extent, it is in most cases, quicker to rent a 1-bedroom apartment than it would be to rent a large single-family home. And to be clear, when we say rent, we mean rented to qualified, screened tenants.

The reason for this, the size of the tenant pool. There are more tenants looking for more affordable solutions than there are for higher priced properties.

Location –

Location, location, location as the saying goes. This rings true for the rental market as well. Well located properties will typically rent faster than those in less favorable locations.

Asking rent –

If you are priced too high, you will not attract as many tenants. We find the tenants you attract when priced too high are usually the ones you would not want to rent too. We always try to maximize our investors income when renting properties by listing them for as much rent as we think we can get without sacrificing the number of potential qualified applicants. Pricing too high can end up costing you weeks and even months when trying to secure a qualified tenant for your rental property.

Property attributes –

Property attributes, or maybe better said as, the lack of certain property attributes can have a significant impact on the time it can take to find a tenant. Things like.

  • Lack of parking
  • Bachelor instead of a 1-bedroom
  • No outdoor space
  • No laundry
  • Dated interiors

Just to name a few.

Time of year –

The time of year can really have an impact on trying to rent out a property. Anything close to Christmas is usually slow, however with very low vacancy rates in the Barrie, Orillia and really most of Simcoe County, there is usually always demand for rental units.

This chart shows interest in our properties that were listed for rent in 2020. Pretty consistent except for March and April, which was the onset of the pandemic. It does show slightly less interest in and around December and January.

Market Conditions –

The last piece of the equation is the current rental market. If the current rental market has a lot of rental listings and a high vacancy rate, well, it is going to take longer to rent something. In contrast, a market with low vacancy and not much market inventory will usually mean a quicker timeline to find and source a quality tenant.

The latest vacancy rate statistics as provided by the CMHC for areas in Simcoe County with more than 10,000 population are shown below. Barrie sits at 2.1% as a total vacancy rate for private rental accommodations. Interesting to see Orillia with such low vacancy. There is not much data available, which is a bit of a shame, but looking at 1-bedrooms, a 0.4% vacancy rate is extremely low. These figures are published as of October 2020.

Private Apartment Vacancy Rate % – 1-Bedroom, 2-bedroom, 3-bedroom – Ontario – CMHC

So, to sum things up, there really is no great answer to the question, “How long will it take to rent out my apartment”, unless we know some specifics about the property. With some information in hand, we could give you a pretty good estimate. In most cases we can find and source a quality tenant for most property types, locations etc, within 2 to 5 weeks.

Thanks for reading along, for more information on our property management services, please click here and for information on working with Jeff to buy and sell real estate in the Simcoe County area, click here.

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