How To Rent Out Your Home In West Virginia
🏡 Renting Your Home Can Be a Challenge
Renting your home can be a challenge. How do you find tenants? What do you put on a lease? How much is a lawyer going to cost?
Worst of all, what if someone comes in and trashes the home you worked so hard on? (Shoutout to the woman who wrecked our blinds and ripped the handle off of the microwave). Many people experience these fears and honestly, they are not unwarranted. It is important to set your rental property up correctly.
Obviously and clearly with a biased opinion, we suggest you get a property manager. Yes, some profit comes out of your pocket. However, property managers handle eviction court, maintenance coordination with trusted people they have worked with (and who usually warranty their work), and make the hard phone calls to collect rent. There are many other tasks a property manager does to make your rental home a true supplier of passive income.
If you don’t want to jump into a property management relationship just yet, here are 4 main tasks you must complete that will make renting your home a lot easier.
List your property and SCREEN YOUR TENANTS!!!!
We cannot, and I mean cannot, tell you anything more valuable than to screen your tenants. Websites like Zillow and Rent.com can screen for criminal and eviction history.
Are they always spot on? No.
If a background check comes back clean does that mean you will have no problems with a tenant? Also no.
However, there are really amazing families out there that would love to rent your home, and screening your tenants just makes sure you get connected with a great one.
-Shameless Property Management Plug: We actually verify income and employment as well. We want to make sure we aren’t putting someone in there who loves your property, but may put themselves in a tough financial place to make rent every month.
Make sure your lease is airtight.
Lease laws in West Virginia can be a little bit overwhelming. Lawyers are expensive. Can you just download a lease from online? Absolutely. My first rental property was a lease created by Rocket Lawyer.
It was cheap, but man it was hard deciphering that thing. I had to enforce my first lease I ever had signed, and that was stressful to say the least.
-Another Shameless Plug: Our leases that we have tenants sign has been refined over and over again to specific issues we have seen pop up in West Virginia. We cover all the problems you haven’t had yet. We also make sure the lease is fair to the tenant, so they not only are comfortable but happy to sign it.
Be ready for many, many work orders
Your home is great. You’ve put a ton of time and effort to make it beautiful. But remember that commercial about Febreeze and going nose blind to your pet smells? Your home is kind of like that. Not necessarily pet smells (or maybe it is), but all the little things you ignore over time come back to bite you. To you they seem like just a drip from a faucet that you had been meaning to fix, or a toilet that runs, or an outlet that doesn’t work but doesn’t really matter. Your brand new tenant is going to expect all of those to be fixed, and in a timely manner.
-Plot Twist, Another Shameless Property Management Plug: That means you need a plumber, an electrician, or a reliable handyman who shows up. If you have those, great! If that overwhelms you, maybe consider giving us a call.
Always answer the phone
This is more of a preference, but to be a good landlord you need to be available to your tenant. They have put their trust in you to answer questions, be on call at all hours for emergencies, fix things in a timely manner, and have great documentation on rent (This includes a trust account specifically for security deposits).
Do you have to do all of these things to rent out your home? No.
However, it is really hard to keep a tenant long term if you aren’t a great landlord. Being a great landlord is really tough, but it is well worth it.
You get the idea. Call us.