I have had a few rentals. Sometimes they are worth it and sometimes they are not. They are always a pain in the rear. Last year I sold the first house I ever bought. I bought it to live in, but met a woman a few months later who I married. I didn't have any equity in the house so I rented it out. The first renters didn't make it 6 months before they couldn't keep up with the rent....second set of renters were worse...paid deposit and rent and never another dime...and trashed the place smashing holes in the was on the way out. 3rd set of renters were there almost 13 years. They consistently were 2-3 weeks late with the rent.. eventually they moved out, and I had to go in and try to get it ready for new tenants. They were smokers....the cigarette smoke was so thick on the walls, that it looked like fire damage. Not kidding. Could not scrub the nicotine and smoke off some of the walls, It had soaked into the plaster. Couldn't seal it on two walls...it kept leading through. So I hired a guy I had worked with many times to come in and tear out 3 walls and replace them. He tore out the walls......and then disappeared for a few weeks. Then popped back up and started working on it again.....did two walls but ran out of money to do the last one. Need an advance for materials. Then...this is the best part, .....moved into the house. Nope.....still not kidding. At this point, there was no toilet in the house. He moved in with his girlfriend, and a large dog. I hadn't heard from him in a week so I drove over before work to check on progress and his care and another car were already there. Door is locked....I don't hear anything so I knock on door and hear a dog barking...WTF???? He comes outside barefoot in jeans and no shirt. And he can't stop itching at himself, like he has bugs......You guessed it....drugs. I walk into the house and for some reason, he has torn out the two walls he just put in, and they are in a pile in the middle of the floor, along with all the baseboard in the whole darn house....all in a pile in the middle of the floor of the living room. His GF walks out of the house with a german shepherd and gets into the second car in the driveway and drives off. I look at the guy and ask what the heck happened to the walls??? He says he had to start over again..doesn't tell me why. I said, you need to leave....don't come back. You don't work for me any more. Then I told him that I figured he was on drugs....my guess was crack or meth, and he needed to clean himself up, but he darn sure wasn't going to work for me any more after that. He left. I looked around. There was no furniture in the house. They had rolled back the wall to wall carpet in the spare bedroom and were sleeping on the carpet pad, with a blanket There was a bit more drama with him, since I had known his father for 15 years. He was a family friend. I brought in two more contractors, one of whom had worked on my current home...they fixed up all the crazy stuff that was done by the previous guy. Then I am trying to rent it out but I want to have a management company handle it.....so, the management company wants me to sand and coat the hardwood floors. They bring in someone they have used before. Who sands, and coats with Polyurethane. But doesn't blow out the pilot light on the furnace.
--Pause for dramatic effect--
It's a special day, when your rental manager calls to tell you that your house blew up. Yes...not completely...it was more of a "flash fire" with a great deal of concussive pressure damage.Thus began a year log journey with Insurance, fire investigators, forensic engineers, and fire restoration companies.
From previous properties that I have rented out, or "flipped", I know that the best time to sell is when lots of renovations have been done. There was not going to be a better time to sell. So I did. I made out well on it. But along the way, I got screwed by an insurance company that wouldn't pay for renter damage, renters that couldn't pay rent, renters that trashed the house after not paying rent, renters that damaged the house with their bad habits. I had insurance drag their feet and try to give me a chump payoff that would barely clear the note I owed on the house, leaving me with an unsellable piece of crap that the county had already condemned.
So, yes, renting can be profitable if you buy right....meaning pay low enough that people wlll pay rent that gives a profit above the mortgage. but there are always bad things out there that happen, even in decent neighborhoods.
