The Hardest Part of Holding On is Letting Go!
As a rental home owner, I know firsthand about the slew of emotions that come into play when you choose to rent out your home. Although I am not the kind of person who gets sentimentally attached to a house, I can see how others might. I have had the pleasure of working with a LOT of homeowners. While most of them make the switch from homeowner to investment property owner without any difficulty, others seem to have a bit more trouble. You see, if you want to become a successful investment property owner, you have to be willing to view YOUR house as A house. Lets take a quick look at how this can affect your way of thinking.
Someone who views their home as THEIR house is going to worry excessively when a tenant wants to paint a room, plant flowers, hang pictures, mount plasma T.V.s, etc. As you can imagine, this can create a bit of a hostile living environment for tenants. If a tenant moves into a home and is forced to leave everything exactly how it is on move-in day, it is the equivalent of asking someone to live YOUR life instead of their own! Once you turn your keys over to someone else, you have to be able to view the rental as a business. You aren’t living there anymore, the tenant is. Now, some homes may be fabulous to the point that every human being would love to live there without changing a thing, but odds are pretty strong that a tenant will want to do something…
Obviously there are boundaries! For example, I wouldn’t give a tenant free reign to knock down walls to make rooms bigger, cut skylights, or perform other major construction without my consent, but if they want to paint a room for their daughter, hang a giant plasma, or plant veggies out back, I say go for it! Why you may ask? Because this is one area where I know that it is not personal, it is business. The happier I can keep my tenants, the longer the tenant will stay, and the more money stays in my pocket. That is just good business sense! After all, you can always tell them they have to put everything back the way it was if they decide to move out.
It can be especially to move out of a house you lived in for a long time and make the transition without a lot of emotions involved. One of the ways to make it easier is to hire us!
Anyway, good post, Jon. I agree that the more you let the resident make your house their home, the more likely they are to become long-term residents. And long-term residents are good all around.
That should say “It can be especially tough to move out of a house…”
I agree especially when the house has been your home. We could not rent out the first house we lived it. It was easier to sell it then to imagine some one else living in it when it used to be our home. Buying a property for the purposes of renting is much easier!
Deepak, your words are valued as a seasoned real estate investor. Thanks for sharing!