LONG: Renting to a Friend

[imojoebunny]

The only thing that really matters with rentals is market rent. Not your expenses or your feelings about boyfriends or anything else, other than your ability to absorb the cost of vacancy and find a tenant who can and will pay your price on a regular basis. Vanilla courages approach is just plan dumb and probably illegal if she discriminates against families because of it, but it is not all that hard to understand that people need to earn enough combined and have decent credit to be good tenants.

Nothing wrong with raising the rent, just make sure the market rents are in line with what you are asking, that you can absorb the vacancy time, as well as any repairs that need to be made due to normal wear and tear, have the ability to find a new tenant, and move on. 20% is a very large rent increase, but it may be viable in your situation, but not for the reasons you state in your OP, only because market rents in general are up.

[Deleted]

You got some good advice here. I just wanted to say that I would call your tenant versus email them, and then follow up with an email so she can have time to consider. You have a good tenant, which is worth a lot!