Real estate glut keys rental boom

With a small cardboard “Room for Rent” sign in the front of his yard, Tim Frye is more the exception than the rule when it comes to the real estate market these days.

The owner of a modest single-family home on Empire Street in Dale City has taken on renters for a couple of years, but not because he’s in financial trouble.

He does it mostly out of the goodness of his heart.

“I try to look out for people’s well being and they are helping me in the process,” said Frye, who’s already paid off his home and lives in Culpeper with his mother on weekends.

Rooms and houses have always been for rent in transient Northern Virginia, where many military and government families move in and out every couple of years. However, when the real estate market crashed earlier this year, prices plunged. Now confidence remains low despite the recent uptick in sales in Prince William County.

This has forced many people — many of them homeowners — into the rental market. Take a look at online marketplace Craigslist these days and it’s difficult to miss the huge volume of rooms for rent.
There were nearly 300 rooms to share listings posted in the last week for Woodbridge and Manassas and more than 500 listings in the area for apartments and housing for rent.

Keller Williams realtor Berna Able recently posted an advertisement on Craigslist in hopes of attracting homeowners who want to lease their condos, single-family homes or townhomes to those who need “affordable, safe and clean housing.”

Rooms for rent

Even though she doesn’t handle them, Able has noticed the upsurge in single rooms for rent, having received at least twice as many calls for those properties as she did when the market was well off.

“[People] know they can afford $700 or $800 for a basement,” said Able, who works out of Woodbridge. “They are looking for the cheapest thing they can find, and they are looking for stability.”

Able’s job duties were the same before the market tanked and now that it has, her workload has grown. Using methods of advertising like Craigslist these days are necessary, she said. She said that “conventional real estate does not exist right now.”

New homeowner Nadia Castillo is using Craigslist to rent out a room in her Manassas townhome because she wants to be able to afford more schooling. Castillo said she’d be willing to lower the advertised rent if she goes too many more days without an offer.

Farooq, who chose not to give his last name, hasn’t had any luck with the Craigslist posting for his Dale City townhome. He said the main issue has been the security deposit requirement.
“They talk about,  ‘can you do this, can you do that,’ can I pay it later, or pay $50 a month?’” said Farooq, who lost his job as a dental hygienist recently and is struggling to make his mortgage payment.

More bad news

The glut of foreclosures and poor economy have also affected the apartment complexes in the county. A manager at the Dale Forest Apartments, who declined to give her name, said there’s been a noticeable increase in late rental payments.

On the flip side, the depressed housing market has allowed some of Dale Forest’s more dependable tenants to buy foreclosed homes recently — leaving more vacancies than usual. In Monday’s Washington Post online real estate section, there were nearly 1,000 for sale listings for Woodbridge homes ranging in cost between $70,000 to $200,000.

To combat this, Dale Forest has offered incentives like reduced rent and waived application fees.

Able said it’s important to her to assist people who really need a place to live. In such a unique and devastated real estate market, Able said most real estate agents are either working with banks to take people’s property through foreclosure or they are attempting to provide some sort of shelter for people who really need it but can’t qualify for it under normal circumstances.

“A lot of people already exhausted many of their avenues before they find me,” Able said. “They have already been to apartment complexes. They have tried everything they know to do.”

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-878-8062.