4 ms·

Signing a lease is a new, expensive obligation, and being a landlord is a second job. That approach might be right for some people, but it's definitely not the

by giaour 3y ago

Signing a lease is a new, expensive obligation, and being a landlord is a second job. That approach might be right for some people, but it's definitely not the same as just selling your old house and buying a new one somewhere else.

JohnFen 3y ago
Letting a property management company take care of things mitigates a lot (but not all) of that. They'll take a huge cut of the income, of course.
- chiph 3y ago
  Obviously this depends on the location and the management company. Mine takes 50% of the first month's rent for finding & qualifying a new tenant, then 8% of the following rent payments. So far they have done a decent enough job - I just have to prod them on repairs to not use the absolute cheapest approach (my theory is a nicer house can justify a higher rent, vs. all the ones in the market that are run by corporate landlords and look like it)
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > to not use the absolute cheapest approach Can I just say -- you rock. I've been a renter my whole life (I prefer it that way), and I appreciate when the property owner steps in to keep property management companies from being total cheapskates with repairs. It makes sense -- it's the owner's investment, after all, and I don't mind paying a bit of a premium for a place that is well maintained.
  - nradov 3y ago
    It's common for property management companies to arrange for kickbacks with certain repair contractors. I'm not claiming that any particular management company is corrupt but I know of cases where this has happened and it's tough for absentee landlords to detect.
- scarface74 3y ago
  And that still doesn’t take care of vacancies and long eviction processes.
hadlock 3y ago
"being a landlord is a second job" is something I hear a lot from renters, I've never heard this from an actual small time landlord who has two or less rental properties. And yeah, if you have 30%+ equity in your house you can generally have a property management company handle everything for perpetual 10% of the rent + first month's rent and come out even, in most competitive markets. Being a landlord in a low cost of living area, more than an hour from a major city is probably a losing proposition for most people under 50.
- scarface74 3y ago
  I had two properties. It was a second job.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  My parents, others in my family, and a couple former co-workers have had a rental unit or two at one time or another. Exactly one of those didn't strongly advise against it, and that one said his situation was good only because he'd been careful to buy units where they were almost certainly going to go to nursing school students, who are likely to be relatively-stable, stick around for at least a couple years, leave before long if they can't pay anymore for some reason, and extremely unlikely to trash the place or try to run a meth lab out of it or anything like that. In all other cases the complaints are similar: the return on time and money invested is just way, way too low to be worth the risk & frustration. But, none of those engaged a property management company. Maybe that makes the difference.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  I did exactly this. After a period of initial search I got some good tenants, and my only interaction with them is calling the plumber or something on their behalf every other month.
- astura 3y ago
  My parents were landlords for almost 20 years. They owned a six family that we also lived in most of the time. It was a ton of work and they didn't make hardly anything after expenses. We had several cleanups that could be on the Hoarders TV show. My grandparents were landlords for like 50 years. They said they wouldn't be worth it if their children weren't doing all the work for free.
everybodyknows 3y ago
This is the real-economy, human tragedy routinely overlooked within the Fed's policy mistake of unsustainably forcing down long interest rates. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14ImM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14ImM Holders of big mortgages taken out at low rates are trapped in them, so they will continue to suffer in quality of life, and the economy will continue to suffer sub-optimal output as they try to adapt to work in captivity.
- 0zemp2c 3y ago
  this is (no joke) why The Fed wants to engineer a recession job losses will trigger home sales by necessity, and the great mass of people with 3% mortgages will be unwedged by force same thing happened after 2008...the recession pushed people out of the best mortgages they ever had
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > this is (no joke) why The Fed wants to engineer a recession No it doesn’t. The Fed wants home values to go down. That can occur without job losses. (Which even now, largely aren’t occurring outside tech.)
    - 0zemp2c 3y ago
      connect the dots...and the people holding up the jobs numbers (Target, Costco, Chiptole) don't own homes, even in Kentucky
- tacticalturtle 3y ago
  While I’m sure it’s less than ideal, I would not describe the temporary inability to swap out a valuable asset for an equivalently valued asset as a tragedy.

by giaour 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

Letting a property management company take care of things mitigates a lot (but not all) of that. They'll take a huge cut of the income, of course.

chiph 3y ago
Obviously this depends on the location and the management company. Mine takes 50% of the first month's rent for finding & qualifying a new tenant, then 8% of the following rent payments. So far they have done a decent enough job - I just have to prod them on repairs to not use the absolute cheapest approach (my theory is a nicer house can justify a higher rent, vs. all the ones in the market that are run by corporate landlords and look like it)
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > to not use the absolute cheapest approach Can I just say -- you rock. I've been a renter my whole life (I prefer it that way), and I appreciate when the property owner steps in to keep property management companies from being total cheapskates with repairs. It makes sense -- it's the owner's investment, after all, and I don't mind paying a bit of a premium for a place that is well maintained.
- nradov 3y ago
  It's common for property management companies to arrange for kickbacks with certain repair contractors. I'm not claiming that any particular management company is corrupt but I know of cases where this has happened and it's tough for absentee landlords to detect.
scarface74 3y ago
And that still doesn’t take care of vacancies and long eviction processes.

hadlock 3y ago

"being a landlord is a second job" is something I hear a lot from renters, I've never heard this from an actual small time landlord who has two or less rental properties. And yeah, if you have 30%+ equity in your house you can generally have a property management company handle everything for perpetual 10% of the rent + first month's rent and come out even, in most competitive markets. Being a landlord in a low cost of living area, more than an hour from a major city is probably a losing proposition for most people under 50.

scarface74 3y ago
I had two properties. It was a second job.
yamtaddle 3y ago
My parents, others in my family, and a couple former co-workers have had a rental unit or two at one time or another. Exactly one of those didn't strongly advise against it, and that one said his situation was good only because he'd been careful to buy units where they were almost certainly going to go to nursing school students, who are likely to be relatively-stable, stick around for at least a couple years, leave before long if they can't pay anymore for some reason, and extremely unlikely to trash the place or try to run a meth lab out of it or anything like that. In all other cases the complaints are similar: the return on time and money invested is just way, way too low to be worth the risk & frustration. But, none of those engaged a property management company. Maybe that makes the difference.
asdfman123 3y ago
I did exactly this. After a period of initial search I got some good tenants, and my only interaction with them is calling the plumber or something on their behalf every other month.
astura 3y ago
My parents were landlords for almost 20 years. They owned a six family that we also lived in most of the time. It was a ton of work and they didn't make hardly anything after expenses. We had several cleanups that could be on the Hoarders TV show. My grandparents were landlords for like 50 years. They said they wouldn't be worth it if their children weren't doing all the work for free.

everybodyknows 3y ago

This is the real-economy, human tragedy routinely overlooked within the Fed's policy mistake of unsustainably forcing down long interest rates. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14ImM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14ImM Holders of big mortgages taken out at low rates are trapped in them, so they will continue to suffer in quality of life, and the economy will continue to suffer sub-optimal output as they try to adapt to work in captivity.

0zemp2c 3y ago
this is (no joke) why The Fed wants to engineer a recession job losses will trigger home sales by necessity, and the great mass of people with 3% mortgages will be unwedged by force same thing happened after 2008...the recession pushed people out of the best mortgages they ever had
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > this is (no joke) why The Fed wants to engineer a recession No it doesn’t. The Fed wants home values to go down. That can occur without job losses. (Which even now, largely aren’t occurring outside tech.)
  - 0zemp2c 3y ago
    connect the dots...and the people holding up the jobs numbers (Target, Costco, Chiptole) don't own homes, even in Kentucky
tacticalturtle 3y ago
While I’m sure it’s less than ideal, I would not describe the temporary inability to swap out a valuable asset for an equivalently valued asset as a tragedy.