Renting out your home

KYMelissa06

Has anyone done this?  Where is the best place to list your home "for rent"?  

Brian and I are thinking about renting our home out sometime in the next year.  We live in a condo and the sales prices have dropped drastically in the time that we have lived here.  We can't sell without taking a huge hit so we're thinking at this point that renting may be the best way to go.  We had our house on the market for a year unsuccessfully, but have really wanted to move for 2.5 years.  

 

kel716

We *almost* opted to rent out our condo.  I'm soooo glad we didn't, but then again it was a different market.  The problem we ran into (in 2007) is that when we posted our ad on CL, people were offering $400 less/month than what our asking price was.  Um, no.  We factored in our fees and a small amount of money for repairs/ and maybe a profit, and the offers we got wouldn't even cover the mortgage, let alone the fees.  So after dealing with the listing for about a month, we pulled the ad and put our condo on the market.  Granted, it was a completely different market at the time, but our condo had an offer 20 days after listing it and we closed 2 months later (now that's a long story).  Now, if it was in this current market, I might be more tempted to try to rent it out. 

I'm pretty sure moesten has rented out property- hopefully she'll have some good insights for you

Traycee1242

We are renting out 2 homes right now and have been for a few years.

DH has a brownstone in Newport and I have a condo in Anderson. When we married almsot 3 years ago we bought a house together and rented them out.

DH's brownstone we do a house share... so we rent to 5 different people (they all have their own rooms and 2 have their own entrances.. they share common areas kitchen, bathroom, laundry) We do a month to month lease on this.. we have people in and out all the time but have never gone a month without a full house. Of course it is right by the Haufbrauhous so it's in a great location. We make quite a bit of cash flow from this property and will hold on to it for awhile. We charge each tenant between $550 and $750 (depending on which room) and it covers everything.. even a cleaning lady that comes 2x a month to clean common areas.

My condo I lose just a bit when I factor in taxes and HOA. I'm negative about $200 a month but my tenants are awesome, want to stay long term so I don't want to raise the rent.

We advertise on craigslist and have found most everyone from there or from their friends.... out of all the people we've had (and seriously think in the last couple years maybe 15-20 at DH's house) 1 didn't work out so welll and we got rid of him with no problems. If you need help with applications or rental agreements let me know.. I would be happy to help...

My brother and SIL also just recently bought a new house and instead of sell in this market, found renters who signed a 2 year lease agreement. So we have had really good luck and no problems. It's worked so well and even with my small "loss" on my condo... all these years of equity going into my home will only benefit in the future.

DH is pretty handy so that definitely helps. We also have a guy that does plumbing and electrical and will always help since DH travels often.

If you have any other quesitons, let me know! I'd be happy to help... sorry I tend to ramble, hope this isn't all over the place!

kyfirewife

DH & I have a rental property. We usually start by listing on CL. If we don't get any good prospective tenants within a few days we'll list in the local community paper as well.

Some friends of ours are doing the same thing. They had their condo on the market for a year, and their realtor (also a mutual friend) recommend they rent it out instead. So that's what they're doing. They've found good tenants, and they're actually getting about $100 more than what they need for mortgage/HOA/etc. so other than the little bit of extra work of actually doing it, it's working out well for them. They're actually considering asking they're current tenants if they would consider a lease-to-own option, so they're hoping it'll eventually lead to a sale.

GL!

KYMelissa06

Thanks for your input ladies!

Tracyee - I'll definitely be looking to you for advice in the next few months as we move forward with this.  

Jscaggs

We rented our condo out in September of 09 b/c we couldn't find anyone to buy it.  We listed on Craigslist and found renters each year relatively fast.  Our first tenant acutally responded the same day I posted the ad.  There are some spam, but I only had a handful for both times that I posted.  And hopefully our new tenant will buy once his house sells (he just got divorced).