I have five rentals, if I leave the rents flat for all 5, then compared with 5 years ago, my income would be $19400/year less or 97K over 5 years.
I had to cut the rent on one foreign property by 45% but fortunately the four in SD county were able to make up for this and then some.
I’m almost 50 and if I live another 30 years, that would be almost 600K of lost rent even if I don’t increase any more going forward. So there may be cases were keeping the rent flat is justified but one needs to look at the big picture.
I didn’t raise the rent on 3 this year for different reasons. One is a widow, one truly has an excellent attitude, one is outside the country and I don’t want to deal with changing. One has an automatic escalation clause and will likely stay 3-4 more years. The one I did change didn’t accept it and it appears I won’t have any difficulty getting a new similar quality tenant at the higher rate.
