Thank you all for your help. It really does make it seem doable.

We are now thinking that we will buy an unfurnished house and rent it only long term--like a year at a time--for two years until we can retire. Can anyone tell me, if it's long-term, what is the tenant responsible for? Must we pay for their trash pickup, electricity, gas, telephone, lawn care, and cable or do they pay for some of these? We need this information to decide on rental amount. We don't need to break even, but we can't take a huge loss. So forewarned is forearmed.

I can relate to this. My husband always told me, "this is what I think." My reply was always, " I don't care what you think, tell me what you KNOW". I need to KNOW the plan. BTW, you will love it here.

You can set it up any way you want. These items can be included in the rent or you can have the renter pay for them separate of the rent.

I believe a long-term renter or tenant usually pays their own cable, phone, internet, electric and or gas bills. The landlord normally will pay the amenities fee which also includes the water, sewer and trash. There are always exceptions, of course.

Tenant Responsibilities
 

We had our tenants secure their own electric, cable, internet utilities, (and add gas if applicable).

The water, sewer, irrigation, trash, and amenity fee bill is bundled together monthly. We wanted the tenants to pay for their own water, etc. so we negotiated the tenant to pay this bill directly. Please note that you as the owner will have to monitor this bill to make sure it is paid, as if it is not paid, it is ALWAYS the homeowner's responsibility. (Some homeowners take the responsibility for this bill themselves and build it into the rent, or reimburse for the irrigation costs, or include water to a certain level and then bill the tenants for any overages. We didn't want to add any complexity into the mix and had the tenants just pay the bill outright.) Also know that this bill runs way behind and not exactly on true month dates. You may need to legally return a tenant's security deposit before you even know if they have paid the bills through the end of the usage period, so you may want to get an idea of what these costs are and decide how to best recoup them from the tenant.

We paid for lawn maintenance (cutting, weeding, pest control), pool maintenance, termite inspection/prevention, and interior/exterior pest control. We also asked our tenant to carry their own renters insurance for their liability as tenants as well as to cover their personal property.

We offer three bits of advice.

1. If you rent for a period of six months or less, you will owe a short term rental tax to the county you live in.

2. If you buy a new home, it can take a lot of irrigation water to get your lawn into good condition and takes good steady watering to maintain it. (We found that there was under watering in the beginning of our lease which led to some large water bills toward the end of the first year, just to get it green again.)

3. We caution you that many people come to The Villages with the intent of renting long term so they can get a feel for the place, sell their other home, they thought they should rent before they buy, and so forth. Many renters, who never thought they would buy right away, like The Villages so much that they go ahead and buy a house AFTER entering a lease. They then want to get out of the lease, some offering to help find replacement tenants, some with realistic and unrealistic expectations. We suggest that you understand this can and does happen and to build the scenario into your lease with a large penalty that is understood from the beginning. In case the lease ends before six months, make sure to include the percentage for short term rental tax as part of the penalty.

Other TV landlords may have some additional advice here. We hope they will chime in.

Waverunner, that is very useful information. We do high-end rentals here in Ohio and we are currently dealing with a tenant who moved out early and thought he would just skip out on the rent. He also trashed the house, to the point that an entire bedroom has to be redone and a bathroom gutted. Our lease makes it clear he can't skip out and we will be taking him to court. But it happens way too often. Fortunately, this is the first time we've experienced it. But I've never seen this amount of damage after 7 months. And the house was so beautiful. Tomorrow we start gutting the bathroom. Boy, am I looking forward to that!