Quote:
Originally Posted by s.brehm
I've been using a property management company for a year and have been unhappy with the service. They are very unresponsive and lack follow-through. I'm nervous leaving my investment property in their hands. Can anyone give me advice on how to rent the house myself? I know how to advertise it online, but have no idea of the logistics involved with getting passes to the renters, collecting taxes, etc. Many, many thanks!
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We advertise through thevillages4rent and ****. **** has lots of blogs about being owner managed, how to supply a rental, etc. We had very good luck renting ours. It's work but buying a rental is like buying yourself a job. We rent Jan through March
only. We won't rent any of those 3 months singularly. By doing that we save our energy and money by just paying for a cleaning company once and paying for temporary resident IDs once. We had didn't have good tenants for Jan through March this year. I was finding problems for quite a while and I hope I finally have them all cleaned up. I have gotten friendly with neighbors who I have asked to let me know if they are seeing more than 2 people in & out of our place. It was such a problem that we are considering locking the 2nd bedroom and renting it as 1 bedroom. We allow 2 guests for a total of 5 days. After that we ask $10 per day per 2 guests to pay for water and electricity. Where can you rent a place for $10 a day?! I keep the place spotless since I feel that if it isn't so clean that a tenant will think we don't care and will add their own dirt. I love cats and dogs but not in my rental. I don't want to rent a place that lots of animal hair in the furniture and I don't want to clean it either. I leave a basket in the kitchen with some snacks, single servings of cereal, single servings of coffee and a bottle of wine. In the fridge I leave a quart of milk, a quart of Florida OJ and margarine. In the bath I leave an extra tootbrush, travel size toothpaste, a disposable razor, some travel size packets of Tylenol and a travel size packet of make-up remover wipes (saves your washcloths), and travel size shampoo and lotion. It's less than a total of $20 expenditure but we have had so many positive comments about these details. Hopefully, that will be one thing that helps them remember our house.
We ask that the tenant pay for the taxes. No one has complained. Tax has to be paid on cleaning fee too. Our biggest problem?......cleaning companies. We are looking for a good one so that we don't have to do it all. If we have to clean, while I am cleaning, my husband checks the batteries on the golf cart, he checks the grill and turns the fire on high to burn off food, checks outdoors, changes the codes on the lock on the door and empties the ice maker. Then he starts dusting blinds and vaccuuming while I am doing the remainder.
Good luck