Has anyone ever bought a house and then..........

[chrismiss56]

Hi to all.

Has anyone ever bought a house and then rented it out? My husband and I are not in a position to move to Florida for several years but are thinking about buying a house down in the Orlando area and renting it out as a way of getting our foot in the door.

Anyone tried this and how did it go?

Thanks
Future WDW Cast Member - hopefully

 

[lightningcoach]

I know it is very difficult to live in another state and rent a home unless you go through a company that handles the paperwork and manages the property for you.

Friends of ours rented out their Florida home while they moved up north and the renters demolished the house. They used the hallway closet for their cat as a litter box, punched holes in the wall and ripped out every appliance. It took them two months after they stopped paying rent to get them out.

If you have any relative or close friends you would trust to rent it then I would go that route. Or look into buying a peice of property only and then building when you move

 

[monkeyboy]

Originally posted by lightningcoach
I know it is very difficult to live in another state and rent a home unless you go through a company that handles the paperwork and manages the property for you.

I agree. being a landlord was not all that much fun

 

[disneyatl]

My inlaws rented a house in FL for 23 years before they retired and moved in. Granted the house needed a lot of work when they moved in but it looks brand new now.

 

[katerkat]

Also, I believe you pay more in mortgage interest if you buy for renting vs. buy for living in. I think *you* have to live in the house for a certain time period in order to qualify for a regular martgage.

DH and I have looked into this, as we're military. We're thinking of buying a place at our next duty station, living there for three years, then renting it once we leave. Luckily, we can specify only military renters, and have the back-up of the military if the renters destroy the house.

 

[ilovepcot]

I'd rather take that trip to Iraq I just read about here on the board than ever have rental property again!!!!! It's the only thing that has ever brought DH and me close to divorce. Never, NEVER again! Ever!

 

[snoopy]

We have 2 rental properties, but ours are local. Still a PITA sometimes. Its been profitable for us though. It helps that my DH is exceptionally handy, we never pay anyone to do repairs. We also have good, solid renters. We did have a problem with the one set of renters one time where she fell behind in the rent, but since I knew them and knew they had good intentions, I worked with them. She got herself back on track and luckily we haven't had any problems since. One thing I learned, though, you always have to be at least one month ahead of your renters -- we pay the mortgage, and then they pay us, in other words. That way, if they fall behind, we have a whole month for them to catch up before we have to incur late fees.

I'm not so sure if I would want to own an out of state rental property. As I said, the best thing about it is my husband can make all the repairs. I'd hate to have to pay a management company to take care of all that.

 

[ZachnElli]

Originally posted by katerkat
Also, I believe you pay more in mortgage interest if you buy for renting vs. buy for living in. I think *you* have to live in the house for a certain time period in order to qualify for a regular martgage.

.

That's not true. You might be thinking of the tax law when you sell a property. You have to live in it for 2 of the last 5 years to not have to pay taxes on any profit from the sell of it. We have some properties out of state, but they are "home". We just moved due to dh's job. We wouldn't go looking for a property out of state on purpose. But he also has a partner in his real estate deals and he is still there plus they do have a property management company they pay to take care of the properties. If you do it, I highly recommend you get a property management company to look after it so no one trashes it and they can go after the renters if they don't pay.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

hmm, I don't know of a bank who will give financing terms equal to that obtainable for Primary residences. This was a hot issue about 5 to 10 years ago when everybody read the "Rich Dad" book and decided to become millionaires through the rental market. I know of some mortgage lenders now who actually do periodic drive bys of suspected unreported rental properties to try and determine who is actually living in the house.

The Florida rental market can be very tough because of the resort properties and the higher turnover in retirement communities. Basically, you really have to know what you are doing in order to make the plan workable.

 

[LindaG4458]

We bought a condo in a Vero Beach retirement community before we were old enough to stay there. We rented it out, mostly seasonally, to retirees ranging from 55 to 92. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN!!! I could go on for pages about the things that happened during those two years. The development had a rental office which handled all the details but it was still a PITA. Our final tenants complained because their clothes clung to the leather recliner and could we replace the chair?

We sold it that unit and bought another in a new neighboring development. I told my husband I would go back to work before I would rent that apartment.

 

[EsmeraldaX]

I know my landlord does not really enjoy being a landlord.

At least in my state, it is almost impossible to evict non paying tenants who have children. (My landlord is having that problem now with the family on the first floor of our 3 family house - Chris, Monty and I rent the top floor.) From what I've heard (keeping in mind this is just from my landlord and one other person I know who is a landlord), being a landlord really , really kind of , well, to put it bluntly, sucks.

I know there are all sorts of laws here about not discriminating when you are picking applicants to rent. Not my landlord, but my old landlord who is no longer a landlord was sued by some people who claimed he did not rent to them soley based on their ethnicity (it had nothing to do with their ethnicity, he did not rent to them because they were scummy people who had no good references). The cost of fighting it was not worth it and he ended up paying them a fairly decent sum of money just to avoid going to court.

From what I have seen of our landlords struggle with our first floor people, they pay their rent about once every 6 months (not in full). There are now 8 of them living in a 2 BR apartment . This is a fairly nice neighborhood made up of single & double family homes and the neighbors have complained about these people more than once, and our landlord has had to pay fines for stuff they've done. The cops have been called in more than once (occasionally by us & the second floor family) to get these people to keep the noise down.

Thus far, our landlord has told us he is trying to evict them, but since the woman has 5 kids living there, he doubts he will be able to get them out. They have TRASHED the place too.

I hope this doesn't discourage you, just approach it carefully if you do decide to become a landlord.

 

[oogieboogie]

Coming from a person who has both rented and landlorded, I wouldn't do it. You're lucky if you get a good tenant, but if you get the tenant from hell, good luck trying to kick them out.

Most tenant landlord laws are favorable to the tenant. We found that out when we had to evict our tenant. We had to file papers, then wait 30 days. Even after the 30 days, we had to file more papers, wait for the sherriff, etc. It took us over 3 months to kick them out, and in the meantime, the tenants did not pay one dime, kicked a hole in the wall, trashed the apartment, left their trash and junk, peed on the carpeting! And because they were scumbags to begin with, we couldn't even sue them cause we knew they would just skip town.

On the other hand, we were good tenants. We were never late on rent, never had loud parties, kept the place in good condition.

I just think it's hard to landlord locally, much less out of town. IMO, that's just asking for trouble.

 

[Pugdog007]

My parents did it once and it was a nightmare. People stopped paying and they had to go through a lot of red tape to get them out. And in the meantime they tore the place up. I had to help clean it up (we were kids) and there was rotten food in the closets. I'll never forget it. Don't do it!!!

 

[JVL1018]

My FIL owned 2 houses in FL, one in Clearwater and one in ?? I forget where. He lives in NJ.
They never lived in them, never vacationed in them, only rented them to long term renters, not vacationers.
It was fine except when people moved out he had to go down, check out the house, etc., or when someone had a problem with something in the house.
He would have to get the plumber or whomever over there..and he is the kind of guy who always thinks he is getting taken advatage of, even more so when he has to do business from 1000 miles away.
He ended up selling them a few years ago when he was around 70 because he didn't wnat to deal with the hassle of beig a landlord, but really it wasn't bad.

 

[Carl]

I have to ditto what the others have said. First, it is really difficult to rent when you are not local. Second, at least 50 percent of the time, if not more, you will get some really terrible people renting. They usually have the attitude that you are getting rich off them, so they will do all they can to make sure they damage the place to keep you from making a profit off their rent. Then, they also know that they can get at least one month's rent free because it will take you that long to evict them. Makes it sound like ALL renters are scum, but it is just more than half of them. You CAN (rarely) get some really normal people who will take care of the house.