I was going to put this tip in yesterday’s article about renting vs. buying, but the article was already getting long, and I didn’t have a good way of weaving it in. But it’s important, so I’m going to share it with you here.
Here’s the situation:
A lot of home owners who would like to sell can’t find buyers. If they are fortunate enough to find a buyer, it might take 10 months or longer. And most home owners don’t have the luxury of time. When they need to sell, they need to sell as quickly as possible.
So what’s a time-pressed home owner turned seller to do?
Answer: Become a Landlord & Try to Find a Renter.
The family who owns the house we’re living in had a job transfer with only four weeks notice. There was no way they were going to sell their home that quickly, so they decided to rent their house instead. We became their tenants.
I share this story with you because home owners being forced to become landlords is a relatively new phenomenon. In the past, only business-savvy investors who wanted to generate cash flow from real estate would become landlords.
Now, your neighbors down the street are becoming landlords… and they don’t even want to be landlords in the first place!
So a word of caution: When you rent, do your best to find a REAL landlord — somebody who rents property as a business.
By doing this, you’ll get a landlord who actually understands what it means to be a landlord. You’ll be able to call on him for repairs. There will be no ambiguity about your relationship with each other.
Not that I have a bad landlord, but I’m finding home owners turned landlords have higher expectations. They want you to take care of their property as if it were your own (even though it’s not). They want you to do things for them that go above and beyond a normal landlord/tenant relationship.
Plus, since our landlord now lives a few states away, is it really reasonable to call him to say something broke and that he needs to fix it? What will he be able to do about it anyway?
The fact is, he can’t really do anything. And he has no management company to call on. So we have to manage repairs that would normally be handled by a landlord, and then ask for reimbursement for the hard costs associated with the repair.
Not really an ideal situation.
So… *IF* you decide to rent, simply be aware of who you’re dealing with. Is it a home owner being forced to rent his house… or is it a real landlord who rents property for a living?
The answer to that question could play a huge role in how positive your renting experience is.
For more information about renting vs. buying, please see:
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