Yes, we’re only in mid-February, but brokers are always looking ahead. As the housing market heats up for the spring and summer selling season, Orion thought now would be a goodtime to take a brief closer look at the rental market. Spoiler: in many areas served by our brokers, rents are more expensive than monthly mortgage payments.

Generally, rents have been rising and are currently at higher levels than they were a year ago. For most markets, rents have been rising even while the housing market has been recovering and showing, in some cases, extremely high rebound rates.

While it may be conventional wisdom that spring and summer are great times to list and sell houses, it turns out that there’s a fair bit of seasonality in the rental market as well. Buyers want to find their ideal home but are constrained by what’s currently for sale. Sellers want to get the best price for their houses, but can only negotiate with the current stock of buyers. Because it is essentially a problem of timing, it is efficient if most people sell and buy around the same time.

Buyers have a greater inventory to choose from, and sellers can get a better price. This leads to the rental market also having more active times during the spring and summer seasons and therefore being seasonal, as well. But this means that the comparison of month-over-month numbers that are not seasonally adjusted won’t be a good representation of the underlying fundamentals in a market.

Recently Orion had some great developments in the jumbo loan sector. And Orion just launched HyperTrack, and will be doing many more broker-focused trainings and announcements. Our products, combined with some very good down payment assistance programs and low rates, have been a great tool for brokers to use to help renters become homeowners.

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