The rental market is soft, whether you're talking residential or commercial the story isn't pretty.

I spend more of my time looking at residential and I've been thinking about this change. Over the last few years more and more fees and special clauses have been piled on tenants.

There are lease clauses that say you have to have the chimney cleaned before you leave. There are clauses that say you have to have the carpets professionally steam cleaned before moving out. There are deductibles charged any time a service call is made. There are clauses that state that tenants will make repairs on anything under $200 with their own money.

And, now there are lots and lots of empty rental properties. So will the pendulum swing the other way?

My hunch is it will to some extent. You're already seeing apartment complexes running all kinds of specials to lure tenants in.

We've had a buyer's market for several years now.

Welcome to the tenants' market?!

The Culpeper Star Exponent reports that two condominium projects slated for Culpeper have been pulled due to current economic conditions as well as the state of the local real estate market. It's not that Culpeper wouldn't be better off with more condominiums in the housing mix, but it's definitely the wrong time. For weary sellers, less competition is good news!

And, that's only a small piece of the good news in the real estate market.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have dropped their "declining markets" indicator. Since just about every local jurisdiction had been labeled a declining market that's big! This indicator meant buyers had to come up with more cash to buy homes in this area. In a market already starved for buyers, this was not helping! Don't expect a flood of new buyers as a result of this, but it should help out a few buyers who were short that extra cash.

And, let me leave you with one more piece of good news. No housing market is completely depressed or completely robust. There are always pockets that are thriving even in the toughest markets. One of those areas here is the rental market. Rentals that are well-priced and in good condition are moving, sometimes pretty quickly. The summer season should be a good one for the rental business. And some sellers might be well-advised to consider renting out their properties that aren't selling.

Sometimes the optimism hits me, even on a Monday morning.

You've heard the old saying "Necessity is the mother of invention." In the same way, crisis often seems to bring out a flood of creativity.

So, on this Monday morning with dismal economic news continuing to bombard us, it's nice to see a blog post with another interesting suggestion on how to help fix the housing market.

The rental listings I have seem to be flying "off the shelves". It's a pretty dramatic contrast to what's going on with the houses listed for sale. Looking at the statistics overall, over half the rentals have been rented in less than 60 days during 2007. Contrast that with an average days on market for sale properties in Fauquier County of 162 right now.

I've argued before that the DOM (Days on Market) number understates how long properties are really taking to sell. But it works well enough for our purposes here in highlighting the fact that rentals are clearly moving better right now than sales.

So, my advice to all my sellers is that if you have the option of renting out your home and riding out the current market cycle, it makes sense. I recommend listing it as a sale and as a rental.

For what it's worth, all real estate agents hate doing rentals and they especially hate them in this kind of situation. I'm going to do all the work I'd do to market your home for sale. I'm going to do additional work to market it as a rental. And the odds are the rental will sell first and I'll get a very, very small paycheck!

But in this market, it's the right thing for a lot of sellers. And it's always a good idea to have the conversation. If you get a renter in there for a year, who knows what the market will look like a year from now. At the very least you've bought yourself some time!