The number of apartment complex vacancies in the city has dropped since last year, but is still high enough to cause concern among the city councilmembers.
Some details were discussed during Mayor John Quinn’s official report at Tuesday’s city council meeting about how the city plans to address the issue.
“I’m particularly concerned about the vacancy rate in apartment complexes right now,” Quinn said. “In 2009 the vacancy rate was just over 20 percent, this year it has gone down slightly to 17.4 percent. This is still a very high percentage; higher than we’ve experienced in several years.”
Councilman Terry Dunn asked the Mayor what a normal vacancy percentage was for the city if all apartment complexes were full but still included a couple of vacancies because of turnovers.
“In years past, we’ve had vacancy rates around 10 percent which is relatively normal,” Quinn said. “Recently, with the addition of large complexes like the Enclave II and Copper Beech is when capacity started to change.”
Quinn said these larger complexes are able to keep the most of their units filled, while the single family housing near campus is taking more of a hit at the moment.
“Right now, I just don’t know exactly where this could be heading. We want landlords to be healthy, and hopefully if this year’s freshmen students stay in school our vacancy percentage will change,” Quinn said. “Hopefully, more students will want to live in apartments off campus and will do so. It’ll take about three to four years to lower the 17.4 percentile we’re at, so the city is excited to see such high rates of enrollment at the University right now.”
When apartments are experiencing such high vacancy percentages, the rates in rent become more stable and lowers the chances of rent increasing, Quinn said. In years to come that will be good news for students because they’ll be able to actually shop around for a place rather than settle signing a lease early on in the year.
“If the percentage does not go down within the next couple years, then the city will have to adapt to the effects it will have on the tax situation for residents in Bowling Green,” Quinn said.
