From Home to Rental in Less Than a Week

Well, the big move has come and gone and we are now officially PA residents.  Although it's been a crazy couple of weeks, I'm happy to say that one of the easiest parts of all of this has been the renting of our primary unit.  Last week I spoke about why it may be beneficial to rent out your home when you move.  Today, I want to talk about the actual process we went through to make this happen.

Once we decided to rent it, I immediately created a listing on Craigslist.  Usually when I put up listings for our other rentals I put them on other sites such as Trulia, Zillow, Postlets, etc.  But with the craziness of the move I only put it on Craigslist.  I made sure to take nice, clean, bright pictures and to highlight the best features of the house in the listing.  Within 24 hours we had multiple calls and within 36 hours we had 6 different people through the property.  

Once we received some of the rental applications we went through our screening process. This is so important and something you cannot overlook if you want to try and avoid future headaches as a landlord.  We followed up with rental history, job verifications, character references.

We also look at current debt and current income.  When we run the numbers we look for our potential tenants to have a similar DTI (debt to income) ratio like when qualifying for a purchase, 45%.  

After going through our tenant screening we reached out to our chosen tenant and finalized the figures.

We rented the property for $1,500 per month, no pets, water & sewage included, parking, washer/dryer in unit.  All other utilities covered by the tenant.

In less than a week we met with our new tenant, signed the lease, went over our expectations and collected a security deposit and first month's rent.

Although we have other rentals and this was not our first time going down this road, it was a great process turning our primary into a rental and allowing it to add to our rental portfolio.

Let me know if you've gone through this process and have thoughts to share with those who may be going through this process in the future!

Happy Investing!