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Should you Become a Landlord

posted October 25, 2007 - 12:42pm
Should you Become a Landlord

Benefits from real estate also sometimes take extra steps and responsibilities. If you are thinking of becoming involved in real estate, then you may also be looking at the job title of landlord. While this is a good way to make an investment and a living, you will want to consider several things before designating yourself to this job.

Before beginning the process of becoming a landlord, you will want to make sure that you can profit from it. This means finding the right place for potential tenants and having the ability to market and find the right demographics that you may want in your home. Having the ability to reach out to the right people can help you if you are thinking about renting property to others.

If you decide to become a landlord, you will want to make sure that you are made for it. You will want to ask yourself whether you are fit to deal with different personalities from tenants. Paying rent late, taking advantage of the property, and other problems will often arise. This causes maintenance and upkeep of different rental areas to be part of the job. You will want to make sure that you can handle different situations effectively and make sure that you can find the right way to take care of the different needs for everyone in the area.

Of course, becoming a landlord could be beneficial for you. If you have the right people in the right place, you won't have to do much work and will only have to collect the rent. Most landlords, if they have a larger amount of property, will have hired help such as property managers in order to handle extra problems that may arise. If you are able to invest and grow enough this way, then you will have the ability to take a year long vacation while the rent is collected.

If you are one that wants to work with renting property and collecting extra profit from it, then becoming a landlord is a good option for you to consider. By finding someone else to live on your property, you will have the ability to collect rent instead of pay it.



Comments

I didn't mention that I was a property manager too

Right out of college I got a job at a small property management firm. What A-holes they were. They stole from the owners every chance they got. Eventually they shut down and I ended up managing a couple of properties for one of their former clients as a freelance manager. I bought properties years later thinking.. I'd done it before, why not do it for myself. The grass is not greener. (my worst tenants have been doctors and lawyers!) Anyone who does decide to use a property manager after reading this, remember to read your statements carefully, The company I worked for Marked up repairs 100% or more. ~While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about~

~While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about~ follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/ahermitt

Good idea...

Before I met my wife, I had a roommate that had a rental house in an adjacent city and was a DIY landlord. He had one tenant that seemed like a good choice on the surface, but she (unbeknownst to him) had worked in a lawyer's office before and knew how to work the system. She stopped paying rent after a petty dispute over something she wanted to do with the property and, because the way the laws are written here in California, she was able to file motion after motion in court claiming things that were not necessarily true. When she finally left after almost a year of court battles, she left the place trashed and also left a bunch of her personal c-r-a-p there, which according to law had to be put in storage at his expense until it was determined that she had indeed abandoned it. Because the house was still being mortgaged and the rent was covering the mortgage (just barely), he took a huge financial hit from her quasilegal shenanigans. I'll admit seeing what he had to go through has given me a distaste for being a DIY landlord and property managers may not always be the best choice, but my goal is to be financially solvent enough to still afford the property manager. _______________________________________________________ "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."--George Orwell

I am a landlord

This article gives good advise... However in a tight economy you may find that you have to "fire" your management company and to the work yourself to keep a money pit from bleeding you dry. Not fun. I would give it up in a minute. As soon as the economy picks up, I am selling my two rental houses! ~While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about~

~While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about~ follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/ahermitt

That's one way to do it...

For profitability without the headaches, there is also the option of purchasing the rental property and turning the day-to-day operations over to a property management company. They can handle collecting rent and taking requests for service calls. If I had a choice between being a direct landlord or hiring a property manager and looking for other rental properties to buy, I would opt for the latter. Good article! _______________________________________________________ "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."--George Orwell

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