How Do You Assist Relocating Renters?

With the highly-saturated rental market, companies are reevaluating the benefits offered to relocating employees who rent their homes in the departure location. Renters generally cost companies much less money to relocate than homeowners; and so there is a desire to assist these employees as much as possible in today’s competitive rental market.

Best practice has been to reimburse lease cancellation fees up to an amount equal to two months’ rent. While this is still the case, there is a growing trend to add additional rental assistance. The statistics have been pulled from the SIRVA database of client policies. They are based on the highest level tier including rental assistance for each company. 

Finder’s fees are sometimes charged by real estate agents to assist individuals in locating a home to rent.

35% of companies cover rental finder’s fees, with 31% of those companies capping the reimbursement at an amount equal to 1 month’s rent. While a cap equal to 1 month’s rent was best practice in the past, current best practice when offering this benefit is to cover normal and customary finder’s fees. This is due to normal and customary finder’s fees ranging greatly throughout the country; from no customary fee, to 1 month’s rent, to 12% of the annual rent.

A real estate agent/rental expert can take the employee on a tour of available rental properties for a predetermined amount of time/days during the home finding trip.

Only 8% of companies are covering this benefit today, with 57% of those companies covering a 1-day tour.

Lease acquisition fees are those fees charged by landlords/leasing offices to apply for a lease. This includes expenses such as application fees and credit check fees.

23% of companies cover lease acquisition fees, with 51% of these companies capping the reimbursement at $200.