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[quote=Anonymous]We rented out a home the past couple of years in NoVA. So, a caveat -- I've heard it is a lot easier to be a landlord in VA than in DC.

At any rate, we rented it out ourselves. The property management companies wanted an entire month's rent to find a tenant and then another month's rent to manage the property. That would significantly cut into the money we would make. And my DH is very handy, most things he can fix himself, so we actually preferred to handle maintenance issues ourselves rather than have someone else handling it. We got very lucky and had wonderful tenants who were super nice and paid every month on time and let us know about any issues with the house. And they stayed for two years.

We did find the tenants ourselves, and that was a much bigger hassle than I thought it would be. We used Zillow, which is useful in many ways, but a big problem with it is that they allow prospective tenants to pay one application fee and then apply to as many places as they want with only that one fee. This can result in a lot of applications from people who aren't all that serious about your house, and the back and forth with people and the showing of the house can take up a lot of time. We were able to insist that people applying have a certain credit score (I think we said 740, but I don't for sure remember) and that helps a lot with the screening of prospective tenants, but I'm not sure if you can do that in DC.

In sum, finding the tenant is a bigger pain than you think, but if you get good tenants and your house isn't truly falling apart or something, then the management part isn't that hard.

Happy to answer any more specific questions. We did just sell the house, but mainly for tax reasons not because we hated renting it out or something. [/quote]

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