The Real Estate Connection manages 130 rental properties in Powell, but on a recent Tuesday property manager Kate Kysar only had one available to rent, a small studio apartment.

She had four available less than a week before, but one-by-one the bigger properties, including a couple of three-or-more bedroom houses, had been gobbled up by eager renters.

Welcome to the Powell rental market. It can be a challenge for renters, but a boost for landlords who aren’t likely to see a property stay vacant for long.

Kysar said availability can fluctuate depending on the time of year, but in general her rentals stay pretty filled up. She recommends prospective renters get an application early, not unlike prospective homeowners getting pre-approved, so they’re able to jump on any property they’re interested in.

“Get an application ahead of time,” she said. “Going through the application and background check process and getting preapproved for that. It’s kind of like purchasing a home in the market. You want to go to your bank and get preapproval. So you when you want that house, you know you’re approved already. So get that application process taken care of because that is good for 90 days. ”

Christi Davis, a real estate agent for American West Realty who also manages all of the 59 rental properties the company manages in Powell, agrees with that advice. Both said they’re more than willing to spread the word on available rentals if they don’t have anything available, because often they don’t.

Davis said the tight rental market has been tighter ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.

“It’s a frustrating market now,” she said.

She said unlike Cody, Powell hasn’t lost many rentals to the short-term rental (AirBNB) craze, but there also isn’t more inventory than before COVID, and there especially seems to be a shortage of affordable rentals compared to the numbers of renters looking for more budget friendly accommodations.

And while Powell isn’t awash with new inventory, Park County has been flooded by new residents. In just the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022, 504 more people moved into the county than moved out. Even after accounting for deaths within the county, the population over that one year timeframe still grew by 1.2%.

Davis said that’s led incoming families or older couples who had planned to buy a house to instead rent on account of low stock for sale houses. And while signs showing houses for sale are at least slightly more numerous than a year or two ago, some of those who would have bought houses previously are now waiting for high interest rates to go down.

Available inventory is so low in Powell that Northwest College staff weren’t even able to adequately price college housing to match the market as there weren’t enough available rentals to compare.

“We had a lot of trouble this spring trying to find comparable rates, there just wasn’t a lot out there,” NWC President Lisa Watson told trustees earlier this year when discussing housing rates. “Historically there has always been a lot of inventory, right now we don’t have that.”

Kysar said affordable rentals are especially sought after, as renters are more likely to hold onto them compared to the more high dollar rentals.

“Those people tend to hold on to those properties if you’ve got a good place and you’ve got a good rent price. Most of them stay put. I have tenants that have been with us for over 17 years in the same property.”

She said Cody does have higher turnover, so some renters accept the commute over the smaller inventory of Cody and then keep an eye on the Powell rental market.

On the other end of the spectrum, she said she’s seen a fair amount of prospective renters from out of the area, although it’s far from the majority. One of the biggest issues some of them have, she said, is adjusting to the fact that Powell is not a big city and thus doesn’t have masses of condos for rent, or giant apartment complexes featuring pools and fitness centers.

“And then I show them like what an apartment building looks like here and they’re like ‘that’s it,’” Kysar said, laughing.

But, as the adage goes, beggars can’t be choosers. And both Kysar and Davis noted they have lists of prequalified applicants eager to get in the next rental right for their situation that opens up around town.