Sell or rent out - DC row house

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sell. You do NOT want to be a landlord in DC, especially if you are living abroad. You would have to hire a property management company to deal with all the maintenance hassles---so that will cost you. You cannot refuse to rent to Section 8 so you could be subject to being part of that regulatory regime and run the risk of having your property trashed. It is impossible to evict a tenant for anything other than non-payment of rent. So tenants having their rent paid by government vouchers can trash your property and you have no recourse. And unless you are planning to come back and live in the property, if you rent it and then want to sell it, you have to (a) legally offer the tenant the right to buy it, which can tie you up for months and (b) have to show it for sale with the tenant in it, which means the property will show poorly.

Just because a resident has a Section 8 voucher does not necessarily mean that they will trash your place.

This is a very discriminatory belief and is simply not on par for the truth.

Renting to a group of young college kids may trash a property - or they may not.
Ditto for anyone else.

Most of the section 8 tenants are ghetto and don't care about your property or the consequences. They don't care about how it would impact them long term if a complaint is filed against them.

[Anonymous]

Hold the TH…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sell. You do NOT want to be a landlord in DC, especially if you are living abroad. You would have to hire a property management company to deal with all the maintenance hassles---so that will cost you. You cannot refuse to rent to Section 8 so you could be subject to being part of that regulatory regime and run the risk of having your property trashed. It is impossible to evict a tenant for anything other than non-payment of rent. So tenants having their rent paid by government vouchers can trash your property and you have no recourse. And unless you are planning to come back and live in the property, if you rent it and then want to sell it, you have to (a) legally offer the tenant the right to buy it, which can tie you up for months and (b) have to show it for sale with the tenant in it, which means the property will show poorly.

Just because a resident has a Section 8 voucher does not necessarily mean that they will trash your place.

This is a very discriminatory belief and is simply not on par for the truth.

Renting to a group of young college kids may trash a property - or they may not.
Ditto for anyone else.

Most of the section 8 tenants are ghetto and don't care about your property or the consequences. They don't care about how it would impact them long term if a complaint is filed against them.

+1. One place I know was a base for selling drugs and so many people hanging on the corner and cars would pull up. The place got raided by the cops twice. I’ve heard stories of places being trashed like crazy. I would never rent to section 8. High risk tenets with bad credits. That is the reality.

If they were so great, people would be lining up to rent to them. That is not happening. Sometimes they will cause thousands of dollars worth of damage and you will not recoup any of that money back to fix things.

Renting to group of young kids who are working professionals with great credit scores are much better any day of the week.

[Anonymous]

I would sell before the regional economy tanks and real estate prices drop. This is not going to be a good area to live.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a property manager. It takes NONE of my time, except the time it takes to move a rent check over to my account.

The prop manager takes 8% a month and is worth all of it.

For those of you who have property managers who you are happy with, do you mind sharing the company? I've been managing my rental in DC from afar -- it hasn't been awful because I've had wonderful tenants, but it's definitely time to outsource. Just haven't found one that gets good reviews/recommendations. Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Property manager is 8-10% of the rent. Never 20%. Unless you rent to careless tenants, maintenance should not be a big deal.

We rented our home in NoVA this year. Property management was 1 mo rent to find a tenant and an additional month of rent to manage the property. That came to 16% and it did not make financial sense for us to pay that (we are local and handy, though).

This is very bad decision and why would you do that. Your PM is laughing to the bank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a property manager. It takes NONE of my time, except the time it takes to move a rent check over to my account.

The prop manager takes 8% a month and is worth all of it.

For those of you who have property managers who you are happy with, do you mind sharing the company? I've been managing my rental in DC from afar -- it hasn't been awful because I've had wonderful tenants, but it's definitely time to outsource. Just haven't found one that gets good reviews/recommendations. Thanks in advance!

Avoid Streamline. We’ve had good luck with Taylor properties, very efficient and got us great tenants at a higher than expected rent.

[Anonymous]

Can’t comment on how the area may change but can tell you that being a landlord abroad depends entirely on your tenants. If you have easy, honest tenants it can be easy.

But when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong, even with a property manager. A property manager will be limited in how much they can do if the tenant stops paying. Or anytime there is turnover/vacancy. There will be general wear and tear, and tenants can do funny things, you will be mystified by some of the damage and modifications. Plus the tax/admin/filing headache if you are setting up a corporate entity to be the landlord.

We faced a similar dilemma (low mortgage, HCOL city, afraid we would be priced out) and held and rented. It was a big source of stress during bad tenants. We now have good tenants but they are probably leaving next year and we are now ready to sell, because I hate being a landlord and we realized we will never move back to that home anyways, for multiple reasons (size, neighborhood, different stage of our lives).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm selling my FCC house with a 2.5% mortgage because I hated the neighbor, lol.

But this year we have rented it out. I'd always told my DH I didn't ever want to become a landlord; I've heard too many horror stories. But aside from it being more work than I thought to get our tenants, we've had zero issues. We required min credit score of 740 for every adult who would be living in the house, and I think that controls for a lot.

But we will be selling due to tax considerations. The house appreciated a lot in value and you don't pay tax on the sale of a primary residence -- and after three years of renting it out we can no longer call it a primary residence for tax purposes. So given that we will want to sell it eventually anyway, we are going to go ahead and sell when our tenants move out after the end of their one year lease to make sure we avoid taxation on the appreciation. We did not use a management company, which you might need to if you are out of the county; and so be aware that when we looked into that we found that they charge you one month's rent to find a tenant, and then charge you another month's rent to manage the property. That would have cost us money rather than us making money, so we have dealt with all of that ourselves. But we are local, and my DH is great at home maitenance and can fix anything that comes up (and a couple of things have).

If I were you, and knew I were coming back in three years, I'd be inclined to keep it and rent it out so that you can move back in. But beware of that tax thing -- if you come back in 3 years and decide you want to live somewhere else and you sell, you could take a tax hit on any appreciation assuming there are no exceptions that apply to you.

in falls church city? how much are rents of sfh there?