Hello everyone i am due to PCS in a few months and my wife and I are pretty stable that we can afford to pay for our current home and rent at our new location. But we want our home to bring in some money. I have been doing searches but it brings up more questions than answers.
For those that rent our their homes how did yall go about it? We are kinda nervous about this because we won't be close to keep an eye on the house and the last thing we want is unexpected expenses. We are also considering Airbnb the rooms instead of renting. Any input is appreciated thank yall!
Posted by kakarota
1 Comment
I’m currently renting out my first home. As soon as these renters are done I plan on selling it, so take what I say with a grain of salt
1) every property management company sucks. All the PMs oversee hundreds of homes and can’t tell you anything about yours.
2) remember the 2/5 to 2/15 rule only qualifies while your still in. The math changes
3) rental homes smell weakness. Whenever you’re a little tight on money, that’s when something massive breaks. When I separated to start school, I had a couple months of no working and no pay. My roof started to leak because the PM company only hired shoddy people to work on it. It cost me 20k after paying for 4k in “fixes” prior. I had 0$ in income at the time (but luckily a sizable savings)
4) budgeting 20% of the rent and assuming 3 months of vacancy each turnover seems to be what it has been for me over the last 5 years
5) I self manage my property now, which is much better, but it only worked because I already had tenants
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For Airbnb, because you’re geographically separated, you’d probably have to get a PM company who specializes in that. I’m not sure how else that would work with you being gone
I’ve rented out rooms in my primary home on Airbnb and it was both a positive experience and very lucrative