With rental rates heating up – and the spring sales market sluggish, at best – many traditional real estate sales agents are taking the plunge into rentals.

“I think there’s a lot of us that have strictly done sales – I had strictly done sales for about 12 years – and as the market’s been getting slower we’re taking on rentals, whereas before we would have referred them to a rental agent for a small referral fee,” said Ken Smith, a senior sales associate from Gibson Sotheby’s in Boston’s South End neighborhood.

The traditional path for many agents has been to transition from rentals to sales as they grow their business, mostly because sales pay much higher commissions. But the shake-up in the real estate market of the past several years has turned a lot of would-be homeowners into renters.

Owners Turned Renters

Former homeowners who have gone through a foreclosure or short sale; potential first-time buyers who have been locked out of a purchase by strict underwriting; transferred employees whose previous property is stuck on the market back home; and many who have the ability to purchase, but want to keep their powder dry until the market turns around – all have been pushed into the rental market.

A recent survey of 1,252 property managers conducted by credit reporting firm TransUnion found that more than two-thirds of landlords were finding it easy to attract tenants, with nearly 90 percent reporting their properties had vacancy rates of less than 10 percent. Nearly half – 47 percent – of property managers reported seeing more applications from people whose homes had been foreclosed on.

As more people looking for housing turn to the rental market, more agents looking for a paycheck are doing the same.

“All my friends in real estate, with 15, 20 years in real estate, have now been taking on rentals,” said Joe Conway, an agent with At Home Real Estate in Dorchester. “When sales slump, rentals go up.”

It’s not just agents in Boston who have been taking a look at the market. Linda O’Connor, broker/owner of Real Pro Assoc. in Beverly, said she’s had requests from associations all over the state for her Realtor education classes on property management and rentals.

In Haverhill, Robin McKeon, co-broker/owner of McKeon/Corcoran Real Estate, has been doing both sales and rentals for 26 years, and lately she’s been seeing more and more sellers open to renting.

“I’m going to meet with someone in a few minutes, and I’m bringing the paperwork to rent along with the paperwork for selling the place,” she said. “I do that with 50 percent to 70 percent of my listing appointments now.”

The Fine Print

But sell-side agents who might be eyeballing the rental market should know the grass isn’t always greener. In many markets, the rental inventory differs substantially from the sales inventory, and agents will have a whole new set of properties to visit and neighborhoods to bone up on.

Laws governing landlord-tenant relations are very different from those governing buyers and sellers, sources told Banker & Tradesman, and agents who might think they know all the ins and outs of fair housing or lead paint regulations may find themselves unpleasantly surprised.

“I’ve definitely noticed more sell-side agents willing to get into the rental side,” said Kevin Sears, co-broker/owner of Sears Real Estate in Springfield and a past president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. His firm does both sales and rentals and has a property management division. “[But] it can be tricky for the sales agents who delve into rentals, because there are some intricacies which can open them up to liability. They need to be careful they’re doing things the right way.”

O’Connor said she has witnessed a number of seemingly minor mix ups by inexperienced or ill-informed agents that can have big ramifications, including putting lead paint disclosure forms meant for sellers into leasing paperwork.

“My take is, if you’re going to do it, please do it properly,” she said.

And without strong, company-driven lead generation, the rental market can be lean for those agents not used to the volume needed to sustain business, others said.

“It’s not that easy to jump in and say ‘I’m going to do rentals,’ and establish yourself overnight,” said Michael DiMella, managing partner at Charlesgate Realty Group, which focuses on the Boston and Cambridge markets. “Because you need to do a lot more transactions on the rental side to make the same sort of commissions.”

Even though there’s more demand in the market for rentals – and plenty of developers now breaking ground on new apartment units – the dearth of construction over the past few years means that in many traditional rental markets, supply is low. Many current renters who might otherwise be ready to purchase a home or move into a bigger space are staying put for now, brokers said.

“As much as the [rental] market’s been going like wildfire, the transactions aren’t up,” said DiMella. “Rents are certainly increasing a little bit, the market is becoming less tight. It’s more of a landlord’s market. But because of that I’d say there’s been less turnover, less vacancies, for a broker to rent.”

For agents like Conway, who’ve always done both sales and rentals, the transition in emphasis has been smoother.

Then again, Conway has another ace in the hole.

Lately he’s been spending most of his time at an entirely new business he’s begun, for which sales are a pretty sure thing in a hot summer market – an ice cream shop.