Renting Your House
Renting Out Your House
The answer to this question vastly depends upon your motivation for no longer occupying the home. If you are having a temporary change in lifestyle for job relocation, family complications, or health reasons, but want to keep your home, renting can be a viable option. So the answer is yes it can be a viable option.
If you are looking to sell your home, and it has been on the market for sometime, should you rent? The first thing is to look at why has your home not sold. That may alleviate the need to rent.
If you decide that with your particular situation that renting is the best option to take, there are a number of things to consider before putting the for rent sign on the lawn.
Any home or other residential unit that is being rented out needs to have some sort of lease agreement that the renter signs. Without this option the owner has no recourse if something should happen. A lease provides the tenant rules that they must abide by and the responsibilities that they are in charge of. This includes utilities, property damage, lawn maintenance, and the all important pet issue.
It can be wise to employ a professional real estate agent familiar with rental units for assistance. If not a real estate agent then a real estate lawyer would be a good bet. When you are leasing your home, you are taking certain risks that need to be covered in the lease. Repair costs may be a critical issue in leasing. Not all tenants will care for the home like it is their own. You need to determine when the rent is due and what the consequences of late payments are. Timing may be an issue if the owner is paying a mortgage on two separate homes.
It is important in any lease to determine what the tenant may and may not do without your written approval. Further, what the costs will be for such items that are done without your approval. If landscaping is an issue, either hiring a professional landscape company to care for the property or specific written clauses indicating what is necessary and what is allowed on the property is an important issue to remember. Just because you tended the roses everyday to make them bloom in all the splendor they do, does not mean that a tenant will have any interest in doing so.
Damage due to negligence of the tenant, need to be laid out in very specific terms. If the tenant puts a hole in the wall with a piece of furniture and never reports it so that when you come to inspect the property the entire wall needs to be replaced needs to be written out.
As ridiculous as it sounds, there needs to be a clause in the lease regarding illegal activities. If you do not specifically state that no illegal activities be conducted from your property you could endanger the ownership of the property. In many cases of illegal activities properties are seized assets. Without this clause you could in effect loose all rights to the property.
If you are planning on offering your property for sale, it is not recommended that you lease the property out. It is better to have a professional real estate agent manage the property for you if you are unable to be at the location on a regular basis. For the best answers to your leasing options it is always best to contact your local professional real estate agent or a real estate lawyer.
