Columbus Property Management

What Our Clients Are Saying

Columbus Property Management

Columbus is a river town that spent twenty years turning back toward the water, and it worked. Two old dams came out of the Chattahoochee and left the city with about two and a half miles of whitewater running straight past downtown — the longest urban course of its kind anywhere. You can stand on the RiverWalk with a coffee, watch a raft drop through the rapids below you, and walk four blocks to the Springer Opera House, which has been the State Theatre of Georgia since 1971.

That is the Columbus a visitor sees. The version that matters when you own a house here is quieter. Roughly 200,000 people. Aflac, Synovus and Global Payments running corporate operations downtown. Two hospital systems. Columbus State University. And Fort Benning at the south end of town, moving families in and out on orders every month of the year. Four separate engines, none of them leaning on the others — which is the real reason a correctly priced rental in this city does not sit.

Columbus is not one rental market. It is five or six, and they behave differently enough that pricing a house off a citywide average is the fastest way to leave money on the table or sit empty for a month.

North Columbus off Veterans Parkway, Midtown around Rose Hill and Weracoba, East Columbus along Buena Vista Road, South Columbus, downtown and the Historic District — same county, same school district, same landlord law, completely different rent, different tenant, different time to lease.

Where in Columbus should you own a rental?

North Columbus, 31909, is the steadiest: newer housing stock, the shortest time to lease, and the widest applicant pool because of the Fort Benning housing allowance. Midtown rents fast on character and walkability. East and South Columbus pay a higher yield and demand harder screening. The street matters more than the city.

Midtown is the part of town people fall for. Lakebottom — nobody calls it Weracoba Park unless they are reading the sign — is a long green bowl with a walking loop, and the streets around it are 1920s to 1950s brick and clapboard under old water oaks. Small yards, deep porches, and a water heater in a closet somebody framed in 1948. It leases quickly to people who want to walk to breakfast and will forgive a house its age.

Downtown and the Historic District have changed more than anywhere else in the valley. The RiverCenter, the Bo Bartlett Center, a row of Broadway restaurants that were not there fifteen years ago, and old Golden Park rebuilt as Synovus Park for the Columbus Clingstones, the Double-A club for the Braves. The rental stock down there is lofts and converted mill space, and the tenant is younger and moves more often. Price it for turnover, not for tenure.

North Columbus off Veterans Parkway is where most of our doors are, and where most owners who call us actually own. Subdivisions from the 1990s forward, garages, Muscogee County schools, and fifteen to twenty minutes to a Benning gate depending which one you use. It is the least romantic stop on the tour and the most dependable rental in the city.

What is my Columbus house worth as a rental?

It depends far more on the street than on the city. Two three-bedroom houses the same size, one in 31909 and one in 31903, are not close in rent and will not attract the same applicants. We price against what has actually leased within about a mile in the last few months, not against a Columbus average.

The other half of that answer is time. A house priced slightly high does not rent slowly — it rents late, after a price drop, having already burned four to six weeks of vacancy. That vacancy usually costs more than the extra rent would ever have earned. I would rather tell you a number you do not love in week one than agree with you and be wrong for a month.

Who rents in Columbus?

A steady mix that most cities do not have: Fort Benning families rotating in and out on orders, Columbus State students and staff, medical workers, and locals moving between neighborhoods. That churn is why well-priced Columbus homes do not sit long.

It also means a lot of applications arrive from people who are not here yet. They are renting sight unseen from another state, sometimes another country, on a timeline they did not choose. Handled properly that is a great tenant. Handled badly it is a lease that falls apart two weeks before move-in.

Should I rent it or sell it?

Sell if you have real equity and no plans to return. Rent if the house would cover its costs, or if selling right now means taking a loss you would not accept in a normal year. Those are the only two questions that matter, and the numbers answer them.

We will run it either way and tell you honestly which one we think you should do — including when the answer is sell. The longer version: Should I rent or sell my house in Columbus, GA?

Is this Georgia law?

Yes. Columbus is Muscogee County, Georgia, so Georgia landlord-tenant law governs the lease, the deposit and any eviction, which is filed in Muscogee County. Cross the river to Phenix City and Alabama statute applies instead.

If you own on both sides, they have to be run as two different properties under two different sets of rules: Georgia vs. Alabama for rental owners.

This is general information, not legal advice — laws change.

What do you charge?

Ten percent of the rent we collect each month, plus a one-time leasing fee agreed with you per property when we place a tenant. No management fee in a month the house sits empty. The full breakdown is here.

We manage about 300 homes across Columbus and the Chattahoochee Valley. If you want a real number on yours, send us the address.

Written by Carlos Alex Rozwadowski, Premier Realtors of Columbus Property Management. Former U.S. Army Ranger, 75th Ranger Regiment. Managing Columbus rentals since 2007.