Grand Rapids is “Cool City” for downtown rentals, says Crain’s Detroit

June 11th, 2013 by ifi-admin

Grand Rapids Rental and Property Management company seeking home owners downtown

Do you own property in Grand Rapids? You might find this article in Crain’s Detroit Business interesting. The article cites high demand for downtown Grand Rapids rentals. Though many of our clients are in outlying and suburban areas of Grand Rapids, we’re always looking for quality homes to lease in the city center. If you’ve been thinking about leasing property you own downtown, contact us to learn how we can help. Visit Crain’s to read the full story, excerpted here:

Apartment rentals are hot property in downtown Grand Rapids

By Rod Kackley

One thing that downtown Grand Rapids has going for it: old buildings, many of them empty. Another thing: Demand from people who want to rent an apartment downtown — young people, in particular — has spilled onto waiting lists.

In response, developers are renovating downtown buildings as quickly as City Hall will allow, putting as few as four rental units in some buildings, 30-40 in others and more than 100 in a few.

Developer Sam Cummings, the principal and managing partner of CWD Real Estate Investment, is a believer in rental development in downtown Grand Rapids.

“There is room to run with apartments,” he said. “Rents are doing quite well and occupancy, for all intents, is 100 percent.”

The only vacancies that CWD Real Estate has in The Gallery Apartments are one-month turnovers, when a lease runs its course and a new tenant needs to be selected. Cummings said rents there are in the market-rate range for downtown Grand Rapids — from $950 a month for a studio to $2,500 for a three-bedroom apartment.

Clay Powell, director of the Rental Property Owners Association in Grand Rapids, thinks the number of people renting downtown will continue to climb for the next three to five years because of stricter mortgage lending requirements.

Developers such as Cummings have the luxury of selecting tenants because demand for apartments downtown is outstripping supply. People just out of college, working their first job, are standing beside their empty-nesting parents in line for apartments that are being built wherever there’s an empty space, he said. READ MORE AT CRAIN’S…


 
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