Apartments are beginning to draw more attention from potential tenants in some parts of the Orlando area -- though in others, apartments are still chasing renters with discounts and deals. Complex owners put the brakes on the conversion-to-condos craze during the past year, and now the leasing side of the ledger is regaining a marketing advantage for them. RP Realty Partners, for example, decided in October against converting The Majestic of Downtown Baldwin Park to condominiums -- a decision that has paid off for the California real-estate investment company.
The 177-unit complex is now 83 percent rented, with 50 leases signed during a six-week stretch that ended in November, said Blythe Chambers, manager of marketing and special projects for the Beverly Hills-based company. "We revised our earlier projections and are confident we'll be 100 percent occupied by the end of the year," Chambers said.
Marcus & Millichap's recent third-quarter Apartment Research Market Update for the Orlando area found that "supply and demand are still being realigned" because of the "considerable number of condo conversions." The overall market's vacancy rate, which a year ago was about 5 percent, is expected to be even higher -- 6.4 percent -- by the end of the year, according to Marcus & Millichap.
The commercial brokerage also found that landlords' average monthly asking rate has inched up slowly, by 2.2 percent, to $882 compared with the third quarter of 2006. Effective rents -- the average actually paid after discounts and such -- also rose 2.2 percent to $825. A year earlier, rental rates had risen nearly 7 percent since 2005.
Pressure on the supply-side continues, the report said, especially in areas such as Altamonte Springs, Casselberry and Apopka, and rents are forecast to rise less than 3 percent in the coming year as a result.
Source: OrlandoSentinel.com