Tips For Potential Landlords

A number of years ago my husband and I decided to rent out our home after we built a new home for our family. Although the experience wasn't horrible, there were a number of issues that arose that we weren't adequately prepared to cope with. So before you decide to become a landlord here are some tips and ideas you may want to consider before taking that step.

1. Responsibilities of a landlord: Are you prepared to deal with evictions, any time of the day or night emergencies on the property that may arise, maintenance problems, etc? As a landlord, you will be responsible for any number of unforeseen circumstances that could arise with tenants at the rental property. Remember you are still the owner of that property, no matter who is living their.

2. Make sure the tenant will be trustworthy: You don't want to have to deal with bouncing bad checks for deposits or rent. Make sure you do a good screening of the potential tenant before making a final decision on weather to rent to them or not. A background check on the person, if you're not familiar with him, could save you a lot of headaches in the end. Evictions are costly as well as as time consuming so it's best to know exactly who you're renting to before that lease is signed.

3. Conditions of the lease agreement: Make sure the conditions of the lease are fully understood by both you and your tenant. What utilities as a landlord will you be paying for and what the tenant will be responsible for should be made very clear in that lease agreement. If the potential tenant wants to make changes to the lease or doesn't want to sign a lease, it may be best to move on to another potential renter.

4. Do your financial homework: You will need to be financially sound enough to take care of any potential repairs or maintenance problems that could arise. You, as a landlord are also responsible for insurance on the property and the rates will probably be higher when you no longer live on the property yourself. You may want to make sure you have a little financial cushion to fall back on should problems arise that you're not prepared for. This is where we ran into some minor problems when we were landlords. We worked it out but there were some sleepless night wondering how we were going to do it at the time.

5. Property Condition Report: Get a signed copy of this from your tenant so if and when he may decide to leave, you will know exactly what damages were done on the property when the tenant lived there. This will make the determination if the tenant gets all or part of his deposit back when he vacates the property.

Keeping some of these tips and ideas in mind will hopefully give you a clearer picture of what's involved if you are contemplating becoming a landlord in the near future.

Sources: apartments.com
personal experience