Owner occupied rental property

[Broomstick]

@Taggerung

If I have a good tenant who’s always been paying rent on time, but they happen to fall on some hard times, should I still be this strict?

Depends on the circumstances.

For example, if there is a family emergency/death in the family/similar catastrophe, something time-limited, then sure, make an exception. Even better if the tenant contacts you with “I am going to be late on rent this month because of X, Y, Z. I will pay the rent by X date”. A good, responsible tenant (like myself) will let you know what’s going on and when you’ll get the rent.

If, however, it is not a time limited emergency then you may have to tell the tenant to go elsewhere, but it’s your option how aggressive you want to be with that. Which may also depend on your finances.

My former landlord had a tenant who was desperately ill, first on the transplant list for new lungs then off the list because she was too sick to survive the surgery, then finally in a nursing home. The last two years she was his tenant the rental income was spotty but he cut her a lot of slack because, obviously, she couldn’t work, disability pays crap, and she had been a reliable tenant of his family for decades. Basically, he accepted whatever money she could send him the last two years she was a tenant, and worked with her family to get her moved in the end and clear out the house. But that was an exceptional circumstance AND he had enough other tenants reliably paying to pull it off.

More commonly he’d start eviction proceedings in line with those already mentioned, because most people aren’t that sort of stable, long-term tenant.

Also - be careful of tenants offering to work in lieu of rent. I have done this in the past a few times, the best way to handle that is to pay the person for the work they do for you, rather than try to apply labor to rent. For example, during a period of minimal employment I cut the lawns and worked on the landscaping for several of the landlord’s other properties, for which I was paid an agreed upon wage. Then at the first of the month I paid the full rent. So yes, effectively I was paying part of my rent by working for the landlord, but that way the bookkeeping was a lot less messy and less prone to misunderstanding. Be sure that the tenant is capable and knowledgeable enough to do the proposed work.

[Textual_Innuendo]

@glowacks

I recommend not investing most of your money in a single property. I personally wouldn’t even invest 5% of my investment portfolio into a single piece of real estate.
…
If you want to take on huge risks without having any idea what kind of return you’re going to get, I’m not going to stop you. If you have the money to blow on it and still have plenty for retirement, it’s not a bad idea. But it’s extremely risky and potentially nerve-wracking.

Amen, and well said! I think a lot of us come at this from the other angle, of seeing our landlords raking it in comparatively easily as we reliably write them a rent check every month and thinking “man, that’s the life, sit around and get other suckers to pay your property’s mortgage every month.”

But what’s happening is we here at the Dope are a self-selected subset of people who are probably higher income, more educated, and more conscientious than the base population, and out in the howling wasteland of the real world, it’s a lot harder to keep a winning streak of reliably conscientious rent checks alive.

The only people I know who are really winning the real estate game are people who live in high cost of living areas but have family connections in low cost of living areas and somehow stumble upon fantastic deals for properties, snatch them up for pennies, and then slumlord them out, with their family acting as cheap property managers. And even THAT seems like a lot of trouble to go to!

In HCOL areas, your only upside is the growth in the value of the underlying real estate, and you’re extremely unlikely to break even in the meantime looking at mortgage vs rent disparities. And how much higher can those HCOL areas grow in value? With median income remaining unchanged over 30 years, and likely to continue to remain unchanged over the next 30, how many more million+ dollar house values do you think the future is going to support?

An index fund or similar investment has no such cap on growth, none of the damage risk, is easily re-allocatable, has similar downturn risk, and has none of the hassle of property management, insurance, inspections, ridiculous closing costs, high middleman (“realtor”) fees that deliver no value, property taxes, etc.

[Crotalus]

@Taggerung

Do you live in Dayton by any chance? I Among the places I’m considering are 2 Ohio cities, Cleveland and Cincinnati. Both have very cheap multi family units for sale, especially Cleveland. Do you know anything about those rental markets and the ROI I might expect?

I’m afraid I’m not very ‘handy’ as I’ve never done any home maintenance. What would you recommend I do to acquire that knowledge and skill set?

What is the ‘vetting’ process like?

I’m in Chillicothe, about 50 miles south of Columbus. I don’t know what the rental market is like in other cities.

To learn how to do home repairs, Youtube is a great resource.

My wife has all prospective tenants provide her with the results of a criminal background check paid for by them. She also asks for and calls previous landlords.