Rental market flooded

You may have noticed a few more places for rent around town these days.

If you’re looking for a place, that can be a good thing, but not everyone is happy about the vacancies.

They’ve tried selling their homes on their own, they’ve tried selling through real estate agents, and now it seems more home owners have turned to renting.

Jim Felds, mortgage specialist explained, “Because they are unable to sell their homes for the price that they need to, many of them are being rented.”

Rich Dolinger and Shawna Kenney moved here from Los Angeles so they could afford a place to live while Shawna went to school.

Rich Dolinger, a frustrated home owner said, “We had a great plan, theoretically. From Los Angeles, we were thinking we can’t afford to buy property in L.A., so let’s move to Wilmington where houses were really cheap at the time.”

Now that she’s graduated, the couple is trying to sell, but with no serious buyers in the six months their home has been for sale, Dolinger and Kenny decided to try and rent it on Craigslist.

Shawna Kenney said, “We would love to sell it immediately and move back to Los Angeles, but since that doesn’t look like a reality at this point we’ve had to come up with sort of plan b or plan c.”

With more properties available for rent this year than in years past experience landlords saying they’re having more difficulty filling their homes.

Patrick Kenipp, an experienced landlord said, “Well there’s been a few houses in the neighborhood that have been on the market for the past year, and recently I’m noticing ‘For Rent’ signs in front of those houses and the ‘For Sale’ signs are gone.”

Jim Felds said two main factors contribute to more rentals in our area… the low income housing market because of Section 8 and the reduction in vouchers and first-time home buyer money has become more available.

So those signs won’t disappear any time soon.

We might see for sale signs disappear faster than the rental signs. The government is trying to encourage people to buy homes with a $7,500 tax rebate for all new homeowners.