I recently listened to a great conversation between property management influencer Marc Cunningham and housing analyst Ivy Zelman on the Property Management Business podcast. One of the biggest takeaways was that there is no single "national housing market" anymore. Real estate has become highly localized, and understanding what's happening in your specific market is far more important than reacting to national headlines.
Ivy emphasized that affordability—not a lack of demand—is today's biggest housing challenge. Elevated home prices and mortgage rates continue to keep many households in the rental market longer, supporting demand for quality rental housing.
She also stressed that in today's environment, occupancy often matters more than maximizing rent increases. Keeping a great resident in place can produce stronger long-term returns than aggressively pushing rents and risking vacancy. However, professional property managers are generally reporting having success raising rents on existing tenants due to switching costs, albeit maybe not aggressively as in years past.
The message for owners is straightforward: we're in a more competitive market than we were a few years ago, but the fundamentals remain solid. Success today comes from strategic pricing, minimizing vacancy, and retaining high-quality residents.
If you'd like to hear the full discussion, you can listen to the podcast here:
The podcast highlights affordability challenges, regional differences in housing conditions, and why landlords should prioritize occupancy and resident retention in today's market.
What About Our Local Data?
The podcast led me to look at rental data of the key South Carolina rental markets we serve here at Tailored Homes Property Management compared to the same time last year. Since housing data is so localized we decided to break down the data by zip code using Zillow’s rental market data. We specifically chose to look at the data for single family homes (does not include townhouses) with three bedrooms in each zip code.
Average | Year Over Year | Average Days | ||
Zip Code | Towns | Rent | Change | on Market |
29707 | Indian Land | $2,600 | $500 | 77 |
29708 | Ft Mill / Tega Cay | $2,695 | -$231 | 34 |
29715 | Fort Mill | $2,300 | $205 | 34 |
29720 | Lancaster | $2,283 | $83 | 29 |
29730 | Rock Hill | $1,895 | -5 | 40 |
29732 | Rock Hill | $2,000 | $5 | 46 |
We were not surprised to see some of the large swings in rent in the Fort Mill / Tega Cay markets as we’ve certainly felt these swings first hand. The large change in Indian Land and longer days on market we believe is due to a small handful of properties in that zip code which are outliers and throwing the data for that zip code off.
We also weren’t surprised to see that the data for the Rock Hill markets were more stable and unchanged as it’s a more mature rental market with a more stable inventory and less seasonality to its demand. The single family rents are likely being stabilized due to some pressure created by the large influx of new apartments on the market which are providing some competitive pressure.
What does this mean for us? It’s likely that properties in Fort Mill, Tega Cay and Lancaster will be able to take advantage of these trends and benefit from increased rental prices while homes in Rock Hill will find it more challenging to increase rent. There are nuances in how we would suggest pricing a vacant property versus a renewing lease so you can expect to hear from us as we get closer to renewal times for your properties (about 120 days out).
As always don’t hesitate to reach out to Whitney or me with any questions!
