Would you lease your house?

Only if that was my last resort. I wouldn’t want someone possibly tearing it up, maybe not paying the lease payments, then sticking me with the mortgage of 2 homes again.

If I was to lease my house, I would find a competent agency to handle the leasing and the maintenance. You won’t get as much each month as the agency would take a share, but I think having the agency there to fix things and fight with any bad tenants or squatters would save your sanity.

My husband and I were talking about buying a house in the area we want to retire to when he is done with the military and renting it out while we aren’t there, so that we could start making payments and working on getting in paid off while he was still in the military. If we did, we would get a property manager to deal with the business end of things. Then, when he gets out, we would give them notice, and we would move into the house. We don’t know if that is what we’ll end up doing or not at this point, but it’s one of our many options.

Not if I could help it. I rented a house once, and not only did the renters trash it, they absconded owing me a lot of money. The house was in another state from where I was living at the time, so I only had myself to blame.

@Austinlad The same thing happened to my brother, but he lived in the same town. He couldn’t get them to pay, couldn’t get them to leave and the law seems to be on the side of the renter. He had to wait 3 months before he could start eviction procedures, so that went on another month. He was out at least 6 months rent and utilities.

As the owner of a rental house, I can assure you that the expenses and upkeep on the rental run much higher than you could possibly realize. You’d best take the loss on a lower price, and sell. Every extra cent we have goes into the rental, and we can’t even afford to have our own pool heater fixed, because that money pit takes it all.

I wouldn’t rent it, unfortunately people have no respect for property or things that do not belong to themselves, as others have said the place could be trashed, you could continually be liable for repairs. Then when it come to you putting it on the market t could well cost you a fortune getting it up to standard before resale.

If i were you i would speak to your property agent and ask for feedback as to why your house isn’t getting much interest. Perhaps there is something you need to change before it has appeal….

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. Hell yeah! With a lease you are better protected than if you were just renting it. A lease is a legal document, it says you will do this, and they will do that. If any side does not live up to the lease then the lease is broken. Should they break the lease it will state how much time they have to vacate the premises, what condition it has to be left in, etc. Since they will have to had signed it, and that they understood everything in it and agree with it so they will have very little room to wiggle out of it.

If you want to kill 2 birds with one stone LTO it (lease to own) then you know they won’t trash the place because they figure it might be theirs one day. One of two things will happen (depending on the length of the RTO lease) when the lease period is up and they have the option to declare if they want to buy it, they might have a larger family, job in a different are, or whatever else cause their plans to change and they will abandon the lease. You get the house back –so to speak- in kept up condition, with larger equity ready to LTO again if you can’t sell it out right, or the market will be stronger and you can sell the property for more money and they (the leasee) paid for the upkeep.

I rented out my house when my divorce was going through, did all the vetting myself & set up the tenant agreement through a solicitor… I did hear some nightmare stories but mostly they were renters who had been vetted by an agency.. I wouldn’t use an agency as they’re not to fussy who they give the keys to….. I was fortunate to get a decent couple who both worked & earned half descent wages, I asked for a bond of two thousand & three months rent in advance, the tenancy was for just one year only & everything went well. Just make sure if you do decide to go ahead you get all the utilities pre checked by a competent service engineer to comply with local authority guidelines … :-/

Yes, I would if I wanted out of there bad enough or had to move and it was not selling. You can hired management companies to take care of it. I rent my dad’s house. I have not had that many problems.

We have considered it, but not out of need as a last resort. We want to get a property to lease out, so either we buy/build another one for ourselves when we can afford it, and rent this current one out, or sell this one, build our own one and buy a small one to rent out.
But it’s always risky, what with renters having too many rights that they don’t deserve, which sometimes ends up as them squatting for free on your property leaving you with a big financial burden to carry if you’re still paying off the loan for that home, not to mention the money you’ll have to spend to evict them, which can take months or years.
Having said that, maybe it would be a good idea to interview potential renters at their own homes, so that you can see how they live and how clean they are and how well they look after the place where they live now, and get references from their past landlords etc, this should help decrease any risks involved in renting out your house. And, make sure you ask a big enough deposit to cover any utilities/electricity/water that they may use and not pay for.

Maybe but there are so many factors. An ex and I had a 2nd house we leased and the first tenants were an immediate disaster to where we evicted them and then found others who turned out to be great tenants. You can only control so much, a credit report and face to face interview only tells you so much. Nice clean people can have bad dirty animals and children. Responsible by day people can also be offensive party people by night.

I wouldn’t do it again unless in an age controlled, gated neighborhood with attentive immediate neighbors I was on good standing with to keep me posted of goings on.