Are you looking to turn your home into rental? Preparing your home to become a rental is easy as long as you are trying to sell your house in its current state. I have had a lot of people tell me about all these "projects" they want to get done before their home can become a rental. The key is not to upgrade your home, but to make it a nice, livable house. Not sure what needs to be done before your home is ready? Below is a list of things to … [Read more...]
Thinking of Selling Your Placeholder Home? Read This First!
Are you planning on coming back to the area eventually? Do you want a house that is building equity and keeping place in the market? If the answer is yes, then why are you selling your placeholder? A house that keeps you in the market that has a mortgage that would be reduced by your tenants paying it is a good choice to keep. While there are certainly downsides, keeping your house in the city has a lot more positives beyond the … [Read more...]
Why You Should Screen Your Tenants and How You Should do it
Evictions are very expensive and costly in both time and money. That's why screening a tenant is one of the most important things you can do. Tenant-friendly states drastically increase the importance of screening a tenant so make sure you have a plan to take care of this! The steps that I take to screen a tenant are very important to my process. I require that a background and credit check be run by myself instead of the tenant providing … [Read more...]
How to Establish a Sight Unseen Lease
My husband and I love being landlords, and our newest niche is allowing leases from tenants who are willing to rent sight unseen. Even though we are willing to allow it, I found out from calling around that most companies will not allow these type of leases. For us, it is another way to serve our customer base as 5 out of 8 of our leases over the past two years have been from renters willing to sign a lease on our house sight unseen. Since my … [Read more...]
How to Rent Your House in One Showing
Renting your house out is the most stressful part of being a landlord. I've learned a lot in my time as a landlord and I want to share my tips with you. Here are 5 tips to get your house rented fast at market price. How to Rent Your House With These 5 Easy Tips: 1. Price the House Right: If your house is over-priced by even $50.-$75. then your showing numbers will be greatly reduced and the prospective tenants will not be as serious. 2. … [Read more...]
How to Choose the Best Lease Term
There are many different types of lease terms and they have different pros and cons. Here are a few examples... Three Lease Terms to Choose From: 1. Month To Month (M-to-M): Pros: A short term lease allows either party to break the lease with 30 or 60 days notice depending on the lease. Cons: Tenants can break the lease at any time with proper notice. This is a problem if there are definite moving seasons in your areas. Ask … [Read more...]
The Solution to a Broken Lease: The Buy-Out Clause
Tenants breaking the lease was one of my most common "issues" and seem to occur regularly. The default legal language does not allow for any penalty for breaking a lease beyond holding a tenant to the lease until a replacement has been found. The Problem: Landlords, by law, are required to re-list the house and show the house in a good faith effort. I have never lost a day of rent so I was always penalized. It made me very upset that … [Read more...]