Preparing Your Home to Rent Renting your home is a profitable use of your resources. It is especially beneficial to those that (1) leave the home for a year or two, (2) own more than one house, (3) want to earn a bit of extra money on the side, and the list goes on and on. If you’ve never been through the process before, you’ll want to know the 4 things you should prepare before you sign in a renter. The following four steps will help you prepare your home to rent safely.
Is everything working? First, prepare your house the best you can from a physical standpoint. Make sure everything is properly working. Clean the structure from floor to ceiling. Keep the place orderly and neat to entice potential renters to writing you a check. If you have the resources for it, providing a partially, or fully furnished apartment can add value to the renter. Making the furnishing optional is ideal.
Contract Next, write a contract. Determine whether or not you want them to renew monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Set a monthly rental price. Research the market and find out what the fair market value for a home like yours is. Price competitively. Ask yourself how you would like to let your residents out of the contract should they need it. Some rental properties provide iron clad contracts. It ensures they get their paycheck for every month agreed upon, but it doesn’t help customer relations when they need a way out for good reasons. Determine how strict you want to be and write in clauses that will let people out or keep people in. It’s up to you.
Make rules
Next, a rented home should come with a set of rules to keep it safe. For one, there should be something in the contract that saves you from the liability of excessive damage to the home. This won’t apply to all situations as normal problems—like an air conditioner breaking—wasn’t their fault. In these cases you will have to pay for the repairs yourself. Should there be any major damages obviously caused by the renter, you should be able to charge them for fixing the damages. For another, you should consider what kind of habits you will allow. A no smoking policy might be worth imposing for example. Create a set of rules that will cover your home from damages, but not infringe upon their rights to live in it like their home. There’s a healthy balance you should try to reach. Find out what other renting parties are saying and make your own rules accordingly. Finally, screen your candidates carefully. You should look into their credit history (see if they know how to make payments), criminal history, and past tenant behavior. Their credit history will show how trustworthy they are to make payments on time. Their criminal history will help you determine if you can trust their intentions, integrity, and overall honesty. A criminal can also ruin the reputation of your home or neighborhood. Neighbors would be very unhappy about the choice as well.
Past tenant behavior Finally, past tenant behavior will help you figure out if they will be good caretakers of your house. You want people to be careful with your property, and you want them to be good neighbors. Follow up with managers they used to live under to find this out. Once you’ve cleaned up the house, decided on a contract, set a list of rules, and screened your candidates properly, you can rest assured that you have done the job well. Renting can be a difficult business to get into. Cowart Insurance is all about helping homeowners with their homes. They help everyone get home insurance in Lawrenceville, GA that fits their budget and needs. Find out what else Cowart Insurance can do to improve your home insurance in Lawrenceville, GA. Photo credit: Juhansonin, Great Beyond