I was talking to a friend last week who told me she's trying to rent a house in my neighborhood. Apparently they're going for a much higher rate than I anticipated (2x mortgage+taxes) and are rented almost the day they're listed.
DH and I think it sounds like a great idea and we'd like to take the opportunity to buy a downtown condo and live in it for a few years, get close to paying them both off, then move back to the house and rent the condo out.
We know there's a lot of gambling with rentals, and obviously we'd be able to afford both without renters, if need be.
Sooo, how do I determine my home's rental value? She came and looked at it this weekend and said it would work well for their family. The next step is for us to let them know how much we're asking monthly and see if that's in their price range. We don't even know where to begin.
Re: Home Rental Value?
For sure- I just didn't want to put that number out there and used my reference point because that was the trigger for DH and I to take action.
After more googling, I think we need to talk to a realtor to have them look up MLS rentals in our neighborhood. There are only 116 houses total in the fairly new subdivision and none of them are available to rent right now. From what she said, there have been two in the last few months that have been rented in a day in that price range.
Check wherever rentals are listed in your area. In one of our property's towns, rentals are only listed on the MLS. In another area, they are not on the MLS, but are only listed by agents, so you have to check out every firm's listings on their webpage. In a third area, it's Craigslist and the MLS.
You could also interview PMs under the guise of hiring them. They'd give you a dead on price.
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With how quickly rentals are going here (occupancy is at 95% I think) a lot of rentals aren't getting listed on MLS-type sites. The place right next to ours had a "For Rent" sign outside for less than 48 hours before they found a new tenant.
We found ours on Craig's List - you could just do a search for your ZIP each day or so and see what you find that's been recently listed.
On your way home from work can you do a quick lap around the neighborhood to look for signs? Or is there a message board for your community HOA that you could post to?