Louis Massaro says renters are a growing market that moves regularly, since most leases last about a year. He built his early business by visiting apartment complexes with business cards and incentives, and argues moving companies should target renters as a distinct customer base instead of chasing home sales.
There's more and more and more. The numbers continue to rise of people that are going to be renting, and that's only going to continue to go up. People are getting priced out of the market. Middle class people aren't going to be able to afford homes. They're going to be renting. So there's this whole other market right now. If all you're focused on is home sales, there's a whole nother market of people that are still moving. That brings me back to my first days in business. I would go to the truck rental yard, dispatch the crews, wait for the phone to ring or the next tail from one of the movers, book jobs, and then I would go from apartment complex to apartment complex to apartment complex to apartment complex. I would walk in my ugly little business card, in jeans, in a company sweatshirt and just start talking. And that's how I started it. And then I developed that where we would give gifts, incentives, and then as things built up, I stopped doing that. But right now, those are people that are still moving because how long are residential leases? Most of them are a year. So rents are going up, things are hap. People are still moving and people are still shifting. So let's not put all our eggs in one basket and go, oh, the housing market's down. Moving businesses over.
