Hellobee Boards

We do! When we bought our current home, we kept our condo and rented that out. It was a really overall painless process for us, which I know can vary.

My (strong) suggestions:
- Draft a very detailed and thorough lease (or have an attorney draft one)
- Use a management company so you are an invisible landlord (unless you want to deal with 2am calls!). Your management company should also be properly screening prospective tenants (background check, credit check, etc.)
- Read up some on your local tenant/landlord laws so you have a basic understanding of your rights, your tenant’s rights and what you need to do (i.e., are you required to keep their deposit in a separate interest bearing escrow account? Is one party legally responsible for utilities? Etc.)
- Only rent out your home if you can afford to carry 2 mortgages. In other words – don’t do it if you HAVE to have that income to keep current on your mortgage.

I bought a house before meeting DH, which I lived in for 3 years. After Dh and I married, we moved across the country for his job. The move was quite sudden and we were planning a wedding, so I decided to rent rather than sell when I already had my hands full searching for a new job, moving cross country, and planning a wedding.

It was rented for the past 3 years with no issues UNTIL we got a bad renter this last August. He paid rent the first month and never again and we had to legally evict him. In the meantime, there was some water damage that he didn't tell us about, which made the problems worse. Although the eviction process and fixing the water damage was $$$ and stressful, in the end renting was still a good decision because I had other people putting equity in my house for 3 years.

When I sold just a couple of months back, I was able to replenish our savings from the water damage/eviction costs, plus cleared 10 or 15 grand after paying realtor fees.

I highly suggest you rent it above-board and report the income on your taxes, because then you can also deduct all the expenses (mortgage interest, property taxes, repairs, broker or realtor fees, cleanings, gasoline when you are visiting the property for maintenance, etc).

Get a good, iron-clad lease and pay the $25 to run a credit report (or call and check past housing references) to save yourself a headache. Treat it like a business, and have some back up money set aside for the repairs that will inevitably have to happen. Things can and will break and will have to be replaced ASAP, so you should have savings to cover that (knowing you will be able to deduct later than year on your taxes).

In the 3 years I rented my house, I had to replace the garage door opener, had to repair the fridge once, had to buy a whole new washing machine (it was old, so I knew it wouldn't last forever), and had the AC worked on once.

I'm happy to read these stories because that's what we are currently planning to do when we move. We live in a really hot housing market so it should be a good investment. We will likely use a property management company- dh talked to one who said as long as they are the broker who initially rents the condo (tenant usually pays the fee) they will act as property manager and only charge us when they have to do something, not a monthly fee. So we will see...

@Littlebit7: good points. Our last apartment the owner lived in the buildings and thought he could DIY so many things that were way beyond him. We stuck it out because the rent was way below market value but it was annoying.

Yeah, make sure that you have $5000 minimum, ideally $10000 in the bank for surprise repairs. We had what I thought was a decent amount in savings, and then got a call that surprise, the entire sewer needs to be replaced, tonight. $6000 dollar bill due the next day. Which was painful, to say the least.