Denver is one of the hottest markets in the country. After selling some assets I am down to three buildings and 26 units. The buildings are in A+++ condition, all concerns are quickly responded to, and tenants are treated well. Almost every notice to quit e-mail from tenants have said that they really enjoyed living at the property and they appreciated me as a landlord. Two weeks ago a tenant who left even sent me a $100 gift card,

In the past year, I have turned over 13 units. On September first I received notice that THREE more tenants will be quitting at the end of the month. (16 units in a year). It's because they want to be closer to work, they bought a house... I never ask them why.

It's tiring. These are all units that were fully renovated last year. And I don't have to tell you how time-consuming it is to get each unit leased again. To make it more fun, I will be going back east for the first week of October - while the units are empty.

And now I won't be using Zillow Rental Manager because they charge here. Back to Craigslist. I have just signed up with apartments dot com. We'll see how that goes.

Anyone have experience with them?

Somewhat similar, but not quite as hot and not quite as nice of units.

I'm getting 40-50 inquiries / day from Zumper and Zillow. Zumper is out performing Zillow by 4 to 1. Try it. It's free here. Can't tell you if that's true in CO.

I think an exit interview might also help. Do you try asking, "What can I do to help you stay?" Often they'll saying "moving for job, etc". Can't do much about that. But it seems odd that in a hot market your A++++ properties are losing tenants. Suggests something else is causing this; and I'd want to know what that is.

Alternative is to adopt Mike Butler's strategy and only accept 3 years leases. But that may turn folks off if they are planning on leaving in 12 months....

Bottom line: you need to know their WHY!

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I hear you. I lose track of turnovers. They are not leaving because of anything we did or didn't do, they leave for life reasons that have nothing to do with us. But still involve us...

Thanks, I will try Zumper. I have to say that a lot of leads per day doesn't mean that much to me. It's all about quality, Two good leads is much more meaningful than 20 questionable ones.

I never ask why they are leaving and never will. It's none of my business and I don't care. I am running the buildings as best I can, rents are average (or slightly low), and there is nothing I would change. Once a tenant has announced their intention to quit, that's where it ends for me.

It normally doesn't bother me too much, but three in on month is a lot. Three year leases wouldn't work, and anything over a year makes rent increases too complicated for me, but it might be good to look into.

Sometimes I ask but 99.9% of the time, they offer the reason up front: "We are buying a house!" "I lost my job and I'm leaving the area." "They cut my hours and I can't afford it anymore."

They also always offer, "You guys are the best landlords we ever had!"

Oh I agree on the quality vs. quantity. But with Gmail set up to auto-respond to every "I'm sooooooper interested" email I get, at least the word is getting back to them quickly and it does reduce the time I have to spend. Now all I do is copy/paste all the phone numbers onto one Google voice group text and blast out the same canned response that my email sent. Take 30 seconds to respond to 10 inquiries.

The ones who are worth considering will be easy to contact, and plus I want people who check their messages/emails. If I have to physically call and hassle people to fill out a silly showing form, I don't see that as a good sign for a new tenancy.

Anyway, I'd still spend some time poking around to find out why folks are leaving. Ask in a non-threatening way: "Hey, Ted, sorry to hear we may be losing you. What is one thing I could do to help you stay?"

Life changes are what they are and we can't help it. But if there's more to it that you can solve, then the old "ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure" would sure make life nicer!

I would contend that it IS your business why they're leaving. Haven't you noticed when you unsubscribe from an email list that you get asked why? It's just good business practice to gather useful data from your customers. They can always say no.

Now, as to the turnover fatigue: I've heard that the average tenancy is three years. With 26 units, that means you'll average about nine turnovers a year. The key word here is AVERAGE. That means some years you'll have more than 30% turnovers, some years less. This has been a bad year. That means next year will probably be really good. In the meantime, is there someone you could hire to show apartments and collect applications while you're on vacation? Maybe someone who's eager to learn the RE business?

There are a lot of people buying right now.

Enjoy your trip.

There are reasons why apt tenants move more frequently.

SFRs are great for the low turnover... I’m turnover adverse! So it works for me. When I do have to rerent, there’s always a raise in the rent as a reward. Also I minimize raising rent on good tenants, since 1 empty month for turnover and repairs easily costs more than a $100//mo rent raise.