The Phoenix rent cycle, month by month

Most owners choose their listing date by accident. The tenant gives notice, the turnover finishes, the property goes live. Nobody looks at the calendar, and that single omission is worth between 4 and 8 percent of annual rent in the submarkets we manage.

Phoenix does not have one rental season. It has at least three, running on different clocks, and they pull in opposite directions in the same month. Here is how each one behaves.

Tempe runs on the academic calendar

Tempe is the most seasonal market in the Valley and it is not close. Our average days on market there is 13, but that number is almost meaningless as an annual figure. In July it is closer to 4. In January it is closer to 24.

The rent follows the same curve. A three bedroom house near campus that leases at $2,595 in late August will list at roughly $2,420 in January and still take three weeks. That is a $2,100 difference over a twelve month lease, created entirely by the month on the listing.

If you own near ASU, the strategy is simple and unpopular: align every lease to expire in June or July, even if that means offering a 14 or 16 month term once to reset the anniversary. The cost of one odd-length lease is repaid in the first correctly timed renewal.

Gilbert and Chandler run on the school year

The East Valley family markets peak in June, a month earlier than Tempe, because families move before the school year rather than at the start of it. By the middle of August the pool of families who were going to move has already moved.

These submarkets are slower in absolute terms, 19 days in Chandler and 22 in Gilbert, but they are far less volatile. A November listing in Gilbert costs you maybe 2 to 3 percent, not 6 to 8. The bigger lever here is lease length, not timing.

• Offer 24 months with a flat second year and most Gilbert tenants take it
• One avoided turnover is worth roughly 1.4 months of rent once vacancy and make-ready are counted
• Our Gilbert average tenancy is 31 months, the highest we record anywhere

South Scottsdale runs backwards

The winter visitor cycle takes furnished stock out of the long-term pool from November through March. That thins long-term supply exactly when the rest of the Valley is soft, which is why South Scottsdale holds rent through the winter and goes quiet in June.

For a long-term owner in 85251 or 85257, June is the month to avoid listing and the month a tenant should be looking. For an owner considering furnished seasonal letting, the honest advice is to commit to one model or the other. Trying to run both usually produces a worse annual result than either, plus a harder insurance conversation.

What to do with this

Look at your lease end date, not your rent. If your lease expires in a soft month for your submarket, the cheapest fix available to you is a one-off odd-length renewal that moves the anniversary into the peak. Most tenants agree to it without asking for anything in return, because the end date means very little to them and a great deal to you.

Our rent estimate includes a days-on-market figure for the month you can actually list rather than an annual average, precisely because the annual average hides all of this.

Written for a demo website. Figures are samples drawn from a fictional portfolio, and nothing here is legal, tax or investment advice.