What 6.6% vacancy actually means for Richmond owners.

If you read the trade reports, you'll see Richmond's metro vacancy at around 4.5% to 5%. Pull our portfolio data and you'll see 6.6%. Why the gap?

The honest answer is: we run a working portfolio of single-family rentals, not a curated list of always-occupied luxury units. That means our vacancy rate captures real life — units in turnover, tenants who gave proper 60-day notice, places we're holding off market for repairs after move-out, and the natural friction of leasing real homes to real people.

Headline metro numbers blend a lot of things together. Apartment buildings with continuous leasing teams. Class-A complexes with concession deals. Long-term-occupied homes that have never turned over in the data window. None of those reflect what an individual rental property owner actually experiences.

What 6.6% looks like in practice.

Across roughly 200 homes, 6.6% vacancy means about 13 units are between tenants at any given moment. Most of those are mid-turnover — tenant moved out, we're cleaning, painting, doing repairs, photographing, listing, screening applicants. Average days to lease: 18. Average rent on the new lease: typically higher than the old one (we averaged 8.9% rent growth at renewal last year).

If your single rental sits vacant for one month between tenants, you'll see a 100% vacancy rate for that month. Zoom out to a year, you're at roughly 8% — which sounds high until you remember that turnover always happens, and a month between tenants is normal even in a healthy market.

The number that actually matters.

Vacancy rate, on its own, is a vanity metric. The number that pays your mortgage is economic occupancy — the percentage of potential rent you actually collected.

You can have 95% occupancy on paper and still be losing money if you're undercharging by $200/month and tolerating slow payers. You can have 88% occupancy and be profitable if your rents are right and your rent collection runs at 99%.

The right question isn't "what's my vacancy?" It's "what's my net operating income trending?" That number tells you whether your investment is doing its job.

What we watch instead.

Our team tracks four numbers monthly, and they tell us more about portfolio health than vacancy ever does:

Days to lease. Once a unit is rent-ready, how long does it take to sign a qualified resident? Under 21 days is healthy. Over 30 days means rent is too high or the unit needs work.

Renewal rate. What percentage of residents at lease end choose to stay? We run around 75%. Higher than that and we're probably leaving rent growth on the table. Lower and something's off — maintenance, communication, or pricing.

Collection rate. Of rent owed, how much actually arrived? We target 99%+. Below 97% and there's a screening or enforcement issue.

Maintenance response time. From request to first technician contact. We measure in hours, not days. Slow response is the leading indicator that residents will leave at renewal.

Those four numbers, watched together, tell the real story. Vacancy is just one input among many.

If you only own one or two rentals.

The math gets more volatile with smaller portfolios. One bad month skews your year. The right move isn't to track aggregate stats — it's to focus on the next decision: is this rent right? Is this resident the right fit? Is the unit really ready? Those decisions, made well, drive every metric on the spreadsheet.

If you'd like a second set of eyes on your numbers, that's literally what we do. Bring us your last 12 months of rent roll and we'll walk through what the metrics are telling you about your portfolio's health — no obligation, no sales pitch.