Anyone own a house they rent out?

[Anne]

We are currently remodeling a house that Dave's g-grandfather built. So besdies the money we put into it, it is paid for so we are going to move into that. We are now debating whether to sell or rent this home.

Care to share any experiences you have had with renters - good and bad?

My main concern is someone coming in and trashing the place. I have a friend who has had a couple set of people do that to her (and take off in the middle of the night without paying that month's rent) but her's is much smaller and the rent much less. Not sure if we would get more stable people with a larger place/higher rent?

Anne

[Jenn]

We had a townhouse that we rented out for 2 years but we just recently sold it about a month ago. The townhouse was bought new, by my dad over 15 years ago and he didn't put much work into the place as it was starting to fall apart and deteriorate. We didn't want to have to put a lot of money into the place so we decided to sell since the market was so hot around here.

I will say that at first our tenent was great. We didn't have any problems with him. He always paid on time and never complained about anything, however, about 6 months ago that all changed. He was about a month late paying rent in August and it just went downhill from there. He stopped paying on time and it was just a hassle to get the rent out of him. That was also a decided factor in us selling the townhouse.

The day after he moved out my DH and I decided to go to the townhouse to see the condition and see what needed to be done before we put it on the market. The house was a nightmare! Our renter said he was cleaning it before he left but he didn't clean a thing in the house. There were a ton of nails and screws in the walls that my DH pulled out. There were a couple of holes in the walls about the size of my fist. The bathrooms were disgusting, as was the kitchen. We decided to just call a cleaning service to come out and clean instead of trying to do it ourselves. It was a nightmare and I had thought he'd been a great tenent. I will never own rental property again. I don't like the added stress and neither me or DH are handy enough to do repairs on our own so anytime anything went wrong it was expensive for us.

Good luck to you! I hope you have a better experience than we did.

[Kate]

My parents had a condo that they rented out. They had very bad luck. They found someone to rent the condo through a friend. The day they were supposed to sign the lease they told me parents that they couldn't afford the rent because his overtime was taken away. So, they found another couple to rent the place. The tenants were okay. They paid their rent on time, but were dropping it off at the house most of the time on the day it was due. After five months they called and said that they needed to break the lease because the husband was being relocated to a different town and they needed to be closer to his work. My parents were nice and let them break the lease and gave them their security deposit back. When they went to the condo the tenants had started doing some stenciling in one of the bedrooms and stopped halfway, they also started to paint the kitchen and stopped without finishing and took the paint with them.

My parents decided that being a landlord wasn't for them and sold the condo to my brother.

[Faye]

We rent out two houses currently and four apartments. We haven't had that much trouble with anyone trashing them (yet) but we have had problems with getting the rent on time a few times in the past but since he got rid of that particular family it's been much better. We usually rent to our employees, family members and friends and they usually pay on time. My brother used to rent from us and was late all the time too, so we've only had a couple of people that didn't pay on time. Not too bad.

Just make sure you get the amount in the deposit before they move in that you think will cover the normal wear and tear and repairs to be done on the house when they decide to move out. Keep in mind that they could live there a short time and they could live there for sevearal years. Also, if you allow pets be sure and get a pet fee as well. :) We really love renting our homes and in the long run it will certainly pay off as we get the loans all paid off and start keeping more of the money for ourselves.

[GrdnAngl01]

FH's parents had four rentals, they moved into one, but still rent out the other three. They've never really had too much trouble with any of their tenants. One of them is late occasionally, but it is written into their lease that they have to pay extra $ when they are late (for ex: $25 for the first 5 days, $5 for each additional day of being late). They haven't had too much trouble with any of the tenants destroying the houses, just normal wear and tear. They have allowed their tenants to paint the walls colors (other than white) on the condition that the tenant must repaint back to the original color before moving out. I know 2 of their tenants have been in their houses for a few years, the third just moved in last year, but they really like the house and IL's haven't had any problems with them so they will probably be their for awhile.

We have a townhouse right now, but are looking for something bigger. We are definately going to rent out our townhouse when we buy something else.