Austin Makes the Top Rental City List

Homevestors of America, Inc., otherwise known as the “We Buy Ugly Houses” people (You know you’ve seen the billboards), rated America’s best markets to invest in rental property rankings, a quarterly list that put Austin in the Top 25.

Coming in at number 24, Austin is just ahead of Houston, but far behind Dallas and Ft. Worth, sitting at thirteen and twelve.

This says that Austin, which is still projected to increase in population dramatically in the next 20 years, holds the potential to move up in the list. It’s estimated that nearly 14 percent of single-family homes in the U.S. are rental properties.

Specifically, the rankings produced by Homevestors are based on the level of extra return investors can demand in any given market. Home prices are watched for three years, and gross rents add to the equation.

Las Vegas is number one, and two Michigan cities (Detroit and Warren) round out the top three. These are places where home prices have dropped suddenly, giving empty homes the opportunity to be turned into rental properties inexpensively. Of course, there’s also extra risks in these areas.

Austin home prices are slowly going up, but the most noticeable increase is in rentals, where a 17 percent spike in rent prices means vacancies are down and more people are skipping the mortgage and paying their landlords.

For the full list, check out the release here.