Putting our house for rent in Aurora (sale, renters)

[Maya123]

Hello,

We want to rent our house since we are moving out of CO and we want to know
#1 How should we put our property for rent.
#2 What is your opinion on hiring Property Management
#3 Do you'll have any good recommendation for Property Management.
#4 Appx how much time it takes for house to get a tenant?
#5 What should we consider and important while renting our house?

Any suggestions much appreciated.
Maya

[golfgod]

I'm not going to answer your questions, not in the order you wrote them but in order of importance:

#5 What should we consider and important while renting our house?

The most (really the only) important thing in having rental property is PROFIT. Too many "amateur" landlords think that having a "small positive cash flow" is the same as profit. It's not. The average expenses for a single family home (SFH) are very close to 50% of the rent.

Among your expenses are; mortgage, insurance, taxes, allowance for vacancy-usually 10%, allowance for repairs, allowance for replacement (major systems like roof, A/C, heat) management fees, re-rental fees, legal fees for evictions etc. So if your payment is $1200/month and you're collecting $1500/month in rent you WILL BE BROKE IN A FEW YEARS.

The second important thing is; Are YOU cut out to be a landlord? Many peole are not. I've had rental properties for 30 years and my wife has HATED much of it. Are you going to lay awake nights counting the LOST DOLLARS for every day the house sits empty? That's FIFTY DOLLARS each night in my $1500/month example.

#2 What is your opinion on hiring Property Management
#3 Do you'll have any good recommendation for Property Management.

These two are really one question. How the heck else would you do it if you live somewhere else? At one point I owned and MANAGED MYSELF 16 rentals. My rule was that I would not even consider buying a rental that was more than FIVE MILES from my home. Problems increase at the square of the distance you live from the rental.

Who is going to handle maintenance and collections when you're hours, or states, away? And by the way get ready to be OVERCHARGED for everything when you have a management company. Right now if your garbage disposal breaks you run to HD and buy another one and install it. Assuming that you have even basic handyman skills. With a management company expect to pay about $300 to a plumber for that $70 item.

I'm sure that somewhere there really must be at least one good management company. I've just never run into one.

#4 Appx how much time it takes for house to get a tenant?

My houses AVERAGED no more than 3 days vacancy on each turnover. Of course that caused my costs to be a bit average than others. I ALWAYS repainted the interiors on each tenant change. I changed out my carpet every 4 years, or when the tenant changed, Whichever was longer. Both of these meant that I was often paying someone else to do things that I might do myself. But if my schedule didn't allow it, I'd pay.

OTOH i charged about 5%-8% higher rent than my competition because my houses always looked good and lower than average utility bills.

#1 How should we put our property for rent.

[wilberfoss]

If you're doing this to avoid taking a hit on the sale during the current slump, then all I can say is drop the price, sell the damn thing, and take the loss if you are not in it for the long haul.

Being an out of state landlord is simply a terrible idea unless you hire a property management firm, and even if you do, if you sell a rental property you will likely take a big hit from an owner occupied property, especially in Aurora.

Plus, house prices aren't going up significantly in Aurora anytime soon.

[Luke9686]

Sell it on owner financing with a decent down payment. It's better than a rental.

[WhereTheSidewalkEnds]

All I can say is we did it ONCE when we lived back in Texas and couldn't sell our place. We were 3 hours away from it. I HATED it. What a nightmare. I was so glad when our final tenant bought it.
It was hard to find decent renters - and when you aren't close by you don't know what is going on, or if they have moved out without saying anything.
Like already mentioned, you have to rely and someone else doing repairs when needed.....
I agree - a lot of laying awake nights worrying.