6 Major Things to Know Before Renting Out a Home
By Kay Pascale
With the rising rate of short-term and long-term rentals, there’s a lack of knowledge when it comes to what exactly needs to be done. Different scenarios for renting out your home could yield different challenges. Overall, if you’re deciding to rent out a home to others, there are some basics you should know before you market the home to find a tenant.
1. Pay Attention to Your Home’s Exterior
If you don’t think the exterior of your home matters, think again. First impressions are important. The outside of the house is almost as important as the inside. If a home looks clean and manicured from the outside, potential renters will remember it and have a more positive outlook before seeing the inside. Although keeping up your curb appeal may be demanding for you and your wallet, you can follow some simple tips to manage the toll nature may take on your home and achieve a beautiful look.
2. Understand Indoor Mechanics
The inside of your home goes a bit beyond just looking nice. You need to be prepared for questions about appliances, recent updates, home improvement projects, and how well the working parts are doing within the home. Specifically, air quality can be a huge question among potential renters. Become educated on indoor air quality and other mechanics of your home so that future tenants can feel safe inside.
3. Learn About Required Renting Legal Actions
You will need to address some legal actions if you’re becoming a landlord. Things like insurance and the Rental Housing Amendment Act are good places to start. In addition, you need to consider specific taxes and extra taxation claims to your personal account. Cover your legal odds and ends by consulting with a professional.
4. Lease Writing Is Not Simple
Writing a lease is a way to cover your rights as an owner and your tenant’s rights within your home. There is a multitude of things that need to be evaluated and thought about in detail when writing the lease. Leasing terms can be monthly or yearly—it depends on how long you’re planning to rent. Other things like security deposits, regulations, pet policies, utility payments, and behaviour expectations can all go in the lease.
5. Figure Out Lease Pricing
Setting a price on rent is very tricky. You want to make sure you’re getting a profit from all the money you’re putting into the home, but you don’t want to price the home too high. It may turn off potential buyers. As a result, you may need to experiment with pricing and see if tenants will take the prices you set; this may be a long process so you’ll have to make sure your patience is in order too.
6. Prepare for Eviction and Lease-Breaking
There’s always the unfortunate circumstance of eviction. People are not always as cooperative as you wish and sometimes they change their minds. However, prepare for these unfortunate circumstances before they arise, they aren’t as bad as you may think. Ask a professional what can happen to you and your money if you have to evict someone. Find out what lengths you’ll need to go to before you get brought to court as a landlord. Therefore, it’s important to find out what actions to take before it gets to this point.
Note:
Kay Pascale is a writer on the subject of real estate and will be contributing more interesting and informative articles towards my blog.
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