Job Discussion Forums

[thecrit840]

I am a homeowner and rented out rooms in my house last year while I was away teaching in Mexico. There was no lease--just verbal agreements, and it did not work out as well as I had hoped.

I am considering making another trip down to MX to teach for a year, and this time renting out the entire house with a formal lease agreement.

If anyone has done this successfully (particularly if you're from the US) and you like to rely you experiences and/or advice, please post a reply.

Thanks, in advance.

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Hey there, thecrit840, me again! I'm a home owner, too. Depending on your location, mine's the Mid-South, you can hire a property manager (usually a realtor who has a property management division) that will take care care of the property for you. Mine charges 50% of the first month's rent and 10% thereafter. Mine's been solidly rented out for nearly 4 years and in another 5, it will have fully paid off for itself!

The important part is to interview your prospective management agencies closely and keep them to their word. The drive-bys must be, at least, monthly and they must be ready to enforce community standards. Mine takes care of any legal bills if my renter fails to perform to his/her word and eviction action is called for.

Good Luck!

NCTBA

[johnslat]

Dear thecrit840,
I owned a house in Albuquerque during the late 90s to 2003 and rented it out. Never Cease to be Amazed has a good suggestion, but I had a good friend (whom I trusted completely) do my "property managing" for me. We arranged with the tenants that she (my friend) would drop by (after calling to make an appointment) twice a month for a walk around, and it worked out just fine.
Knowing she'd be around every two weeks kept those UNM college students on the straight and narrow. The place was always well kept-up.
Regards,
John

[thecrit840]

Thank you for the replies.

[Beyond1984]

"If anyone has done this successfully (particularly if you're from the US) and you like to rely you experiences and/or advice, please post a reply." -thecrit840

My first move was to respond to the offer of a realtor to do an "evaluation" of the property - I got 28 pages of info about how much comparable properties in the area had sold for, and an estimate of what the place could rent for.

When I decided to rent rather than sell my lakeplace by Walden Pond, I went to Craigslist ( www.craigslist.com) and posted a free ad, with pictures.

I wanted someone who would keep my bean field mowed and who could take care of minor repairs without a lot of fuss. The response was excellent (maybe because the site allowed me to post pictures). I found a male nurse who works for the VA ... he was willing to do the mowing and was charmed by the bucolic setting.

The realtor wanted me to send her a check for $700 so she could get the property mowed and the home spruced up so as to attract a renter. She wanted 10% of the rent. I was glad to have managed with the help of craigslist rather than her.

Craigslist is full of warnings about dealing with people across borders ... I sent my prospective tenant a link to the property appraiser's website and the picture page of my passport so he could see that I really owned the place. He sent me a scan of his driver's license.

He just made the first deposit into my US bank account ...

-HDT

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."
-Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," 1849

[arioch36]

i had the advantage of having Chinese friends at my college. For the past seven years I have had graduate students rent it, overall, not that many problems. The biggest problems hvae been on my part as a landlord. it's a older house, and its getting a little run down.