Big rent increase from California owners may send this Boise apartment tenant packing
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Affording Boise: Rental housing
Soaring rents. Skyrocketing home prices. The double-digit rates of increase in the costs of Boise-area housing create increasingly urgent problems for low-income, working-class and even moderate-income Idahoans who need places to live. Affording Boise is a series of Idaho Statesman special reports on housing. This collection focuses on rental homes, including apartments. A separate collection focuses on homeownership.
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The letter to residents of the Glenbrook Apartments began with a friendly greeting.
“Happy holidays. We thank you for your tenancy and wish you the best in the Holiday Season ahead,” read the letter, sent in early December.
A bit later came some not-so-happy holiday news: The apartment complex’s new owner would raise rents $700 a month starting when individual apartments get renovated.
The letter announced that the 112-unit apartment complex, at South Curtis Road and West Cassia Street and down the block from Borah High School, had been sold to a California company.
The letter came from Verity Property Management, a Boise company that manages the complex. It said the new owners, RanchHarbor of Newport Beach, California, planned to “perform a much-needed renovation.” The complex was built in 1973 and underwent a minor renovation in 2017.
Jeff Olson, who has resided at the complex for five years, said he was shocked when he read that rent for his two-bedroom apartment would jump from $900 a month to $1,595.
“It started out at $750 when I moved in, and it’s gradually gone up with each lease that I signed, but nothing like this,” Olson said in an interview. “And they haven’t done any improvements to the building since I moved in — until now.”
On its website, RanchHarbor said it paid $23.3 million — $208,000 per unit — for the two-story complex, which is assessed at $12.4 million by the Ada County assessor’s office. The company said previous rents were “42% below market at acquisition.”
The increase for Olson represents a 77% rent hike.
RanchHarbor entered the Boise market in June when it bought the five-unit Cherry Street Apartments at 2435 W. Cherry Lane, off South Vista Avenue. It paid $825,000 for that complex and plans improvements of $29,000 per unit, the company said on its website.
Boise apartment rents rising steeply
The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Boise is $1,218, according to a report Tuesday from Apartment List. From February 2021 to February 2022, apartment rents in Boise rose 20.8%, compared with 17.8% nationally. Apartment List calculates the median rent using current listings and rent statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.
High demand and low supply have combined to drive up rents at apartment complexes across town.
Newer downtown luxury apartments are commanding premium rents. The Fowler Apartments, which opened in 2018 at 505 W. Broad St., charges $1,930 for a two-bedroom apartment. The rent comes with a fitness center, in-apartment washers and dryers, a courtyard with barbecue grills, a dog wash station and energy-efficient units.
Some complexes outside downtown aren’t far behind. The Whitewater Park Apartments at 365 N. Whitewater Park Blvd, built in 1996, now offers renovated two-bedroom apartments starting at $1,702 per month. The complex offers two outdoor swimming pools, a fitness center, an indoor basketball court, clubhouse and outdoor fire pit.
The rental situation in Boise isn’t markedly different from other markets across the country, said Clay Carley, a Boise developer and owner of Old Boise.
“It’s probably more exacerbated in our market in Boise than most of the rest of the country for a couple of reasons,” Carley said by phone. “One, our rents were very low to start. And our inventory of rentals was very low compared to most markets. So that puts us in an unusual beginning point.”
Construction costs have risen by 50% over the past decade, said Carley, whose most recent downtown apartment buildings, the Thomas Logan and The Lucy, have begun leasing to tenants.
“Because of that, rents have to be higher for newly built product,” he said. “Plus, Boise has a gross income and population that’s greater than many markets. We have really high growth and demand, plus buying a home has become a lot more difficult for everybody because prices have gone up and lending requirements by banks have become more stringent.”
The Glenbrook Apartments, rebranded by RanchHarbor as Curtis Junction Apartments, already offers a swimming pool, playground and basketball court. The renovation, at a cost of $25,000 per unit, includes energy-efficient windows, new appliances and paint, a dog park and wash station, barbecue areas and a new playground, along with upgrades to the pool area and clubhouse, according to a news release at the time the building was sold last fall.
But even with the upgrades, the apartments will still feature 1970s baseboard heaters, an in-wall air conditioner that doesn’t reach the bedrooms, and poor insulation, Olson said.
“The upgrades that they’re doing they should have been done years and years and years ago,” Olson said. “Nothing’s energy-efficient, and they still won’t be other than the new windows.”
Neither RanchHarbor nor Verity Property Management returned calls seeking comment.
Apartment complex’s previous owners had caused controversy
The previous owners, Eagle residents Mark and Caran Daly, attracted attention in 2015 when they posted eviction notices for about 400 tenants, many of whom were refugees. They bought the property and planned to increase rents that were $575 and $650 per month to $900 and $1,000 after a renovation.
The city later ordered the renovation project halted after a city inspector, acting on a tip, discovered that no building or improvement permits were obtained.
Olson, a Gulf War Army veteran who works at a Boise Maverik store, said he and his girlfriend, who works at Fred Meyer, cannot afford such a steep increase in rent.
“My initial reaction was we’re going to have to move,” Olson said.
After a large number of tenants moved out following the first of the year, he said the management company offered to let him stay for the time being on a month-to-month tenancy at the couple’s current rent. He’s not sure how long that tenancy will last.
Olson said he enjoys living at the complex, which is centrally located for his needs. It’s close to downtown, hospitals, Interstate 84 and the I-184 Connector, he said.
“You can’t ask for a better location, but that’s a big increase to swallow at one time,” he said. “My paycheck didn’t go up like that.”
Olson, 61, has a son who works in Boise as a remodeling contractor. Olson’s son is considering moving to the Tampa Bay area in Florida, and Olson said he may follow him.
“We could buy a two-bedroom mobile home at one of these retirement villages for right around $25,000,” Olson said. “And then to rent the space would be anywhere from $500 to $800 a month. That would basically be our cost, and that’s a lot less than $1,600. And it’s your own house.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
