Calculating Rental San Francisco Bay Area
Ok, how do I calculate how much to rent my house out? I have a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house, 1350 sq ft. But here's the deal. It sits on a 12,000 sq ft property (2.9 acres) in San Mateo (San Francisco Bay Area). Most yards around here are big enough to fit on a postage stamp.
This one has 10 fruit trees and arable land.
My difficulty is that the house is old 1907. Everything functions well but it is certainly, well as they say, "charming". It's in a working class neighborhood.
Any ideas about how I should go about thinking about this?
Thomas,
Go to hotpads, padmapper or mapliv.com and type in your property address. They will show what are for rent in your area. Look at what others are renting for and come up with your own number.
I have a friend who has a 2/1 house in Santa Cruz. He put it on Craiglist for $1,800/month and got 80 inquiries within the first 24 hours. That was too many so he took off the listing and put it back on the market the next day for $2,300/month and got 27 inquiries within 24 hours. I thought that was still too much so he took it off and did it again the next day for $2,700/month. He got 13 inquiries, and he said that's about right. He rented it for $2,700/month. I guess the market will tell you how much it's willing to pay. :-)
Based on my experience, I get more quality leads from postlets.com than Craigslist. Once you post it on postlets.com, your listing will also show up on Trulia, Zillow, hotpads and a couple of other websites. The good thing is that it's all free to post.
Good luck.