When you buy a family home, it’s natural to go for something relatively large. It’s where you’ll be raising your kids, and you’ll want to have more than enough space for them, after all. Once they’ve grown up and moved out, however, the house can feel a little empty.
This doesn’t always mean you should just downsize to somewhere else. You could rent out part of your home, which offers more than a few benefits, like:
- Avoiding empty nest syndrome after your kids move out.
- Giving you another income stream to rely on.
- Helping set money aside for retirement in your later years.
- Needing to worry about financial issues less than you used to.
But, this isn’t completely straightforward. It’s not just a matter of having a spare bedroom, guest house, or granny attic, and finding someone to rent it.
There’s a lot more to it than that. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it could end up leading to more than a few issues and problems later on. With the right tips and tricks, however, this doesn’t need to be as much of an issue as you’d think.
Seven particular landlord tips could make renting out part of your home noticeably more straightforward.
1. Screen Your Tenants
The main reason why you’ll want to rent out part of your home is the extra income. But, that doesn’t mean renting it out to anyone willing to pay rent. You’ll need to be careful with who you rent to. If you’re not, you could end up having problematic clients, which could end up with property damage and more than a few other issues.
Screening potential tenants ahead of time makes sure there’s nothing to worry about. If you find anything that leads you to believe they’ll be a problematic tenant, you can move onto someone else. It’ll prevent a lot of stress, quite a few headaches, and multiple repairs.
2. Invest in Landlord’s Insurance
You likely would’ve invested in homeowner’s insurance when you first bought your house, especially if you were getting a mortgage. It’s a great way to make sure you don’t need to worry about the financial side of anything that could go wrong. But, you’ll need more than that when you’re renting out part of your home.
Landlord’s insurance could be essential. In quite a few places, you’ll legally need to invest in this before you can rent anything out. And, this applies to part of your property as much as it applies to the full property. You’ve no reason not to make sure you invest in it early.
3. Get Some Professional Help
While renting out part of your home mightn’t need as much work as an entire apartment building, it could still take quite a bit of time and effort. And there could simply be parts of it you don’t understand properly or haven’t got the time to sort out. That’s when professional help can be useful.
If you want to take everything off of your shoulders, you could look into full property management services. On the other hand, you could just get legal and financial help by outsourcing it just when you need the help, like during tax season.
4. Research Local Laws
Renting out part of your house doesn’t just mean finding a tenant and charging them rent. You’ll also need to make sure everything’s legal and above board. Before you even start looking for a tenant, take the time to figure out exactly which laws you’ll need to follow and adhere to.
Many of these will be relatively obvious, like making sure it meets health and safety standards. But, the intricacies of these laws can often vary from state to state, so you’ll need to spend some time figuring out the exact specifics you’ll have to follow.
5. Separate Your Space & the Tenant’s Space
In most cases, you’ll need to make sure your tenant’s space is separated from your private space. Depending on your property, this could be relatively simple. If you’re renting out a guest house, for example, the spaces should already be separated by default. But, it can be a little trickier in other circumstances.
You could need to make adjustments to your property to make this separation. That could mean creating a separate entryway for your tenants to use without them needing to enter your private space, and taking similar steps. Figure this out early and invest in it.
6. Conduct Regular Inspections
Once you’ve separated your space and the part your tenant will be renting, you wouldn’t be spending much time in your tenant’s space. But, that doesn’t mean you’ll ignore that space completely. Regular inspections will be a core part of maintaining your property and making sure major problems and repairs don’t turn up later on.
Make sure you’re following the law with this, as mentioned above. Usually, this means you’ll need to give your tenant a minimum notice ahead of time. The most common minimum here is 24 to 48 hours, so it shouldn’t have to be much of an issue.
7. Maintain Solid Tenant Relations
Great tenancies often rely on the relationship between the landlord and the tenant. If this isn’t great, your tenants are likely to leave once the lease is up. Some could even leave before that. While this isn’t an issue if you’re trying to get rid of a specific tenant, it isn’t exactly the best approach to take long-term.
You could end up creating a reputation as a less-than respectable landlord, especially if you’re in a relatively small market. By having a strong relationship with your tenants, you’ll keep issues to a minimum and have a better landlord reputation long-term.
You could see more than a few benefits if you have the space to rent out part of your home. But, you’ll need to put the effort into it.
By knowing what you’re doing ahead of time, you should avoid more than a few issues as time goes on. And, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t see more than a few benefits without needing to deal with all of the stress.
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