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My understanding is that these price crashes are largely happening in the VHCOL (very high cost of living) like NYC and SF. One of the dynamics at play in the VHCOL cities is that the rent is so expensive that the cost of moving, even if only for a few months, is fairly trivial in comparison. If you are paying $4k for a 1-bdrm apartment, packing your stuff up, putting it in storage, and moving into a short-term rental in a lower COL area is likely to be net positive in term of cash flow. Financially, this make less sense in more moderate COL areas unless the pandemic/lockdown goes on for much longer, or if you can work remote permanently.

So cities like Denver and Austin are probably not seeing as much outmigration, but are also probably seeing some immigration from the VHCOL areas.

Just a friendly FYI, the opposite of immigration is emigration.

Out-migration (with a dash) is fine:

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/outmigration

It seems subtly different (and more correct) to use outmigration, based on what the definitions here suggest. Emigration seems to suggest leaving the country, whereas outmigration seems to suggest leaving for a different part of the same country.

For extra confusion, immigration and emigration are homophones in a Southern accent because of the pin-pen merger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin–pen_merger

Makes me think we should pronounce emigration ee-mah-gration.

You’re just swapping a different set of e/I sounds then.

English pronunciation is a mess.

I've never heard the two sound different in any dialect and I'm not from the south.

Not met many Brits then

Are month-to-month rentals common in these areas? In my experience, renting an apartment in SF almost always required signing a 12-month lease.

In the case of a lease, you can’t just skip town for a few months to save money.

Every lease I have signed converts to month-to-month after the initial 12 month period. From my understanding, that is pretty common. The only places that I have seen that require 12-month renewals are the newer buildings with professional management. But that is just my anecdotal experience. Another thing to consider, the lockdown has been going on for over 3 months now, so 25% of the population that was locked into a 12 month lease has hit the end of their lease term at this point.

Also, there have been some reports of record amounts of lease breaking. Considering that that behavior was probably close to non-existent before the pandemic, the 'record' amount is probably only a few % of leases at most. But it kinda makes sense. If you have access to free or cheap housing (i.e. staying with parents/family, etc...), and if that housing has a better 'pandemic quality of life' (i.e. more square footage, access to outdoors, etc...) than breaking your lease is somewhat rational. Worst case, they force you to pay the remainder of your lease. Best case, they re-rent it or let you get out without paying. Either way, your are improving your QOL, and you are not any worse off financially then you would have been if you stayed in the rental till the end of your lease.

It's pretty common in my experience for landlord in areas with many students to require renewing for a full year, because the rental demand is so spiky. (In Urbana IL, a college town, everything ended 8/1 give or take with absolutely no hope of a part year renewal, here in Cambridge 9/1 is quite common even though there are a good number of working professionals here too. )

> 2). Draconian lease terms. This is a subset of the 1st point, but it's extremely difficult to price the market when you're required to give (move-out) notice well in advance of the actual lease date. Because the market here is so fast, you're basically jumping in blind-folded at what might be available when you go to look for a new lease. Great for landlords you can fill a spot in a moments notice, but horrible for a tenet who's trying to understand the cost of such a decision.

What do you mean here? Just that trying to avoid a month of double-rent means you lose negotiating power cause you have to pick something quickly enough to set up the move and be done in 30 days?

I would absolutely not give up my current market without having the next one lined up, but yes, this means if I'm moving purely to save money, I'm going to have some overlap. But usually I haven't had to have more than 2 weeks, thanks to non-immediate move-in dates.

Just to be clear, I think move-out notice is only one area where landlords use economies of scale to their benefit. Anywho...

If you're looking to price the rental market and you have a 60 day notice, you're probably look at rentals that start 60-90 days out. In a hot market this is an extremely small cohort. If you're required to give 30 days notice that range can extend from 30-90 days, capturing significantly more options.

The net effect here is that tenets lose leverage. In a 30< day model I can look significantly wider without wasting time. in a 30> day model I run the risk of exhausting my runway (and probably taking the first option available).

This is where regulation helps. California requires that notice periods equal rent periods at a maximum. So if you pay rent monthly, you can always ditch a place with a 30-day notice. So you don't get landlords flexing their power by demanding 60-day notices because the government, so dysfunctional in many ways, was effective enough to protect the tenants.

I find most landlords aren’t willing to push back the move-in date on a new place more than a couple weeks in SF. So if I find a place to move into in 14 days, I’ll then give my 30 days notice and end up paying double rent for about half a month as you said. I wish that weren’t necessary, as I usually only need a couple days overlap for moving.

When I was younger and living paycheck to paycheck, I couldn’t afford the overlap and would have to give notice and then start looking closer to the actual date... very stressful! I’m sure a lot of people have to deal with this.

> This is a subset of the 1st point, but it's extremely difficult to price the market when you're required to give (move-out) notice well in advance of the actual lease date.

In many jurisdictions that term would be void or ineffective (I don't think it's technically illegal to have such a term in California, but the landlord has an affirmative duty to attempt to mitigate damages by trying to rerent the unit and there only claim of damages would be for the actual period and amount of lost rent, so anyplace that has a hot market, especially where they can rent both quickly at an an equal or higher rate to a new tenant, there's little meaningful cost to late notice lease breaking.)

Of course, that doesn’t mean the landlord won't demand more, but you can tell them to pound sand, with relevant citations, if they do, and they’ll almost certainly back off.

Tentnants aren't the people who have real negotiating power to drop prices; as a tenant normally the only options are "follow the market" or "offer more than asking price to get a first look".

Panicked landlords are the party with price-dropping power, because their choices are "follow the market" or "undercut the market to get first look".

A landlord might hold out for a few months, but if they are rational and their property isn't tenanted they'll sack the agent.

The US generally doesn't use 3rd-party agents for rentals, they just advertise on craigslist, etc.

In NYC and SF agents commonly do rentals.

As a tenant in Australia, I’ve successfully offered less and also even had agents follow up and offer a price reduction, and try and find other properties for me.

It’s all about supply and demand.