Who has rental properties?

[rubytue]

How many properties / units are you renting?

** just one right now.

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market?

** the one I'm renting is more of a current market thing. Although, my long-range plans includes rentals. I have had a bitch of a time getting DH on board with this plan (I come from a real estate family, he comes from a market family that never talks about money, so he has no reference point). This rental seems to be having the right effect, and is now willing to consider more!

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee?

** We had an REA find a tenant, which was one month's rent. I thought that was a bit much, but we had it listed for rent and sale at the same time, so not much choice. The rest of the management, we do ourselves.

If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects?

** About half a day every other month to go up there, check on the property, and change the HVAC filters. My father's #1 tip was do the HVAC filters b/c it gives you a reason to check in on the property regularly.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications?

** not as bad as I thought.

[SJ]

May 13, 2012 11:49:42 GMT -5 @msstarry said:

QUESTIONS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE RENTAL PROPERTIES:

How many properties / units are you renting?

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market?

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects?

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications?

We own one condo that we are renting out.

It is a long term financial plan. We bought it cheap and rent it at a profit.

We manage it ourselves but may look into rental Management companies in the future.

Tax stuff is not too bad but we did hire an accountant this year as our overall tax picture has gotten increasingly complex.

[dragonfly08]

May 13, 2012 11:49:42 GMT -5 @msstarry said:

How many properties / units are you renting?

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market?

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects?

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications?

We rent out three properties right now.

Two are part of long-term financial planning, the third is our old house. We chose not to sell it when we moved due to current market conditions, but will do so when things pick up a bit.

We manage all three ourselves, even with two of them being out of state. DH doesn't like the idea of a "middle man" and prefers to be hands on with his properties/tenants. It helps that he's been doing this for over 15 years and has a great network of reliable REAs and various contractors to call if/when necessary. He doesn't spend much time at all each month on "business issues"...as long as it takes to deposit the check? That assumes there are no problems. If something does come up, obviously it takes longer depending on what the issue is. Some are as quick as saying he'll fix it the next time he's in the neighborhood, others take an hour or two to line up a contractor, schedule a repair visit, whatever. Twice a year when we visit my ILs (who live near the properties) he does spend half a day on basic maintenance like cleaning/changing filters, fixing any minor problems and cosmetic issues, etc.

Tax implications are no problem. TurboTax walks DH through all of that. To make it easier, he keeps VERY detailed records of everything, as well as holding on to all receipts. Every time he deals with or visits a property, expenses, mileage, etc. get logged on an Excel spreadsheet and he keeps files for paperwork. At tax time he can pull all of that out and everything he needs is right there to be entered into the program.

[Deleted]

How many properties / units are you renting? 1- a 4 BR house

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market? Current market. We'd like to sell if we could.


Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects? We use a property management company bc we live several hours from the house. If we were local then we would manage it ourselves. The fee is 10% of the rent.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications? It was complex on this years' taxes because we were living in the house for part of the year. Next year the house will be rental property for the entire time so it will be a lot easier. We used the upgraded version of turbo tax and it is very detailed about what you need to include when you file your taxes.

[sandy214]

How many properties / units are you renting? just one

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market? it started out due to the current market but we may keep it long term (was our condo that we lived in for 7 years, have been renting it for one and so far, so good)

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects? We manage it ourselves. We probably spend only about an hour a month on it- talking to the tenant, making sure everything is ok, etc. We have been very lucky from what I understand. We did have one water leakage incident but luckily our insurance covered it. That was the most time consuming and took about 5 hours between inspection, dealing with insurance, and dealing with the person in the unit below (into which water from our unit leaked.)

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications? No- our accountant was able to walk us through various scenarios.

[mellymel]

How many properties / units are you renting? 1, a 2 BR condo

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market? Current market. It was my first home. We relocated to another state 4 years ago and couldn't sell it. We just moved back to our home state and it's a little small for us so we bought a bigger house. We take a loss on it each month so I'd love to dump it but we're underwater in a big way.

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects? We manage it ourselves. We spend minimal time each month, some months no time at all, on the business aspects. The most time we spend is when we're turning it over - finding new tenants and handling any repairs necessary.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications? No. We use TurboTax Deluxe (?) and it walks us through everything.

[thatgirl2478]

May 13, 2012 11:49:42 GMT -5 @msstarry said:

QUESTIONS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE RENTAL PROPERTIES:

How many properties / units are you renting? Just one, our SFH. Similar situation to yours - we were listed at 130, dropped to 120 before we decided to rent. Currently owe 103. Had to move due to job relocation (DH's).

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market? current market - see explanation above


Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects? We pay a realty company to do the property management. Our fee is $100 / mo but it's usually 10% of the rent collected.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications? We went to a tax accountant last year because we weren't sure about the process. Now that we have seen the forms he fills out etc, we're pretty confident in our ability to prepare them ourselves.

[thatgirl2478]

May 13, 2012 11:58:12 GMT -5 rubytue said:

** About half a day every other month to go up there, check on the property, and change the HVAC filters. My father's #1 tip was do the HVAC filters b/c it gives you a reason to check in on the property regularly.

This is great - I will have to put this on our list of things to do.

[Deleted]

How many properties / units are you renting? Just one co-op

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market? Due to the current market. However, we are so tired of dealing with the headaches that we are taking a $90K loss to get rid of it. We listed it and hope to sell by the summer when the tenants leave.

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects? None of the management companies I spoke with wanted to touch it due to the nature of a co-op. If it was a condo or a SFH, they said they usually take 10% of rental income. Some months, we don't hear from the tenants at all. Other months, like this one, DH has to deal with them 10x a day. It really depends on what's going on.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications? No, but we use an account to handle our taxes.

[mnvegas]

How many properties / units are you renting? We currently have 15 units, mix of single family, multis and condos.

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market? Most are part of our long term plan, positive cash flow

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects? We manage our own properties. Not sure exactly how many total hours are spent on rentals because they are just a portion of our real estate business.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications? No, we keep a spreadsheet for each property and then turn everything over to our accountant at tax time.

[msmugsy]

How many properties / units are you renting?
One

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market?
Long term plan

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects?

We rent to a corporate housing company so they manage the acutal tenant- we have given them the authority to send out repairmen and fix anything under $100 w/out our prior approval. The rent we get from them is about 10% less than what we could get from renting to an acutal tenant but it is worth it. I spend no time on this property.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications?
We use an accountant and have never had any issues.


Read more: pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=mm&action=display&thread=2094#ixzz1utJYuqDA

[octwed07]

How many properties / units are you renting?
3 condos

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market?
Long term plan, and plus with the market, we're definitely in it for the long haul

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects?
We manage the property ourselves. As for how many hours -- it depends. Normally, maybe 1-2 monthly. If it's a move out, definitely more than that, probably close to 20 hours or more -- it involves advertising, cleaning unit out, showing it to new renters, etc.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications?
Our SIL is our accountant and helps out with this tremendously. If we didn't have her, we would definitely hire one to take care of this.

[jewel]

How many properties / units are you renting?
2 - one condo and one SFH

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the current market?
Both started as our primary residences, and converted to rentals because we knew we couldn't sell for a decent price. The original goal was to hold onto them until the market rebounded, but they will now likely stay as long-term investments.

Do you manage the property yourself or pay someone to manage it? If you pay, what is the fee? If you manage yourself, how many hours a month do you spend on the business aspects?
I manage both myself. Most months, the only time I spend on them is picking the check up at the PO box and taking it to the bank. In 2.5 years, I've only been out to each place a handful of times. The condo still has the original renters in, and they just signed another year lease. The house has turned over once, and it only took one half-day of showings to find new renters. We have lucked into VERY low maintenance rentals.

Have you found it complex to figure out tax implications?
No - I use TurboTax and it's very easy. Monthly, we lose less than $50 per month on the rentals combined, but it lowers our tax liability by a significant amount.

[LoveTrains]

How many rental properties are you renting? Just one - a 1br/1ba condo.

Are you renting properties as part of a long term financial plan or due to the market? Due to the market. It was our primary residence and now its underwater and we don't have the money to bring to the table to sell it. We take a big loss on it monthly but it is what it is.

Property management: we manage it ourselves. It's a condo so its not like we have to deal with exterior maintainence or anything like that. I spend about 5 minutes a month on the business aspect of managing my property. The five minutes is me getting the check in the mail and depositing it in the bank.

Tax implications - Not tough for me at all. I do everything in turbo tax. I keep a spreadsheet of expenses for the year (any repairs, etc) and turbotax figures out the depreciation when you first set it up. Basically the tax implications suck for me because I no longer have enough deductions to do itemized deductions, and then my loss gets limited because you cannot deduct rental losses if your AGI is over $150K. You can deduct up to $25K of losses up to an AGI of $100K for MFJ and then the deduction phases out.