Reply to Renting house on the Hill

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "Renting house on the Hill"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]We moved out of our home in NoVA a couple of years ago and rented it out for two years, and we just sold it.

We too had a 2.5% mortgage and that motivated us to hold onto it and rent it out. We rented it without a property management company -- they all wanted a month's rent to find a tenant and a month's rent to manage it, and that would have really cut into our profits. DH is handy and fixes things himself, so we were able to manage it pretty easily. We used Zillow to find a tenant; that was a lot more work than I expected, but we found a good one and they stayed for a second year. It was so easy that my DH said renting the house out felt like "printing money" lol.

But we did end up selling. Mainly to avoid an eventual tax hit on appreciation as we knew we didn't want to rent it out indefinitely. But also because renting is, generally speaking, a risky business. Even great tenants can end up not telling you about a huge maintenance issue that they caused, or lose their job and stop paying rent, or whatever. Being a landlord isn't too much work when you have a property that has been well-maintained and the tenants are good, but stuff does still come up (we had to replace the hvac unit, which we knew was on the horizon, but it was a hit). I did like the idea of having the money invested in real estate given the craziness in the markets, but we also have the house we live in now and another one that is payed off to boot, so in the end that didn't push us over the edge into keeping it.

Finally, we are in VA. As you pointed out, laws are less landlord-friendly in DC, but it sounds like you are familiar with that.

Lots to consider and no easy answer. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics