Going for 12mo Cruise. What About The House?

[first wind]

Originally Posted by seahag

Good luck. I have had a horrible time renting long distance. A property manager would be a must and do not dare telling the renters your plans or location. They will not pay! Get lots of security deposit because that may be all you see after they move in. Worst thing I ever did was decide to rent my house out...

i tend to agree. renting, in general, can be a nightmare. then you add long distance to it. the thing is, no matter what you do....check references, etc...you never really know who you are renting to until they are in there. then, if it turns out to be a bad situation, a shrewd renter can play the system and keep you from evicting him for months. add in the potential for damage to your property. i mean, that's a worse case scenario but, life is full of worse case scenarios. you can't make important plans without taking SHTF situations into consideration.

i rented out an apartment, once. despite good references and credit checks and people seeming to be decent on the interview, two out of three people i rented to were terrible. the first one that was a bad experience played me in the courts for months; never paying the rent until the court date to get the right to evict. of course, then you can't evict. it takes time to even get your day in court. in the meantime, you are well over a month with no rent coming in. that only ended by me getting seriously angry and the guy being afraid he was going to get hurt. so, being uncomfortable in his 'home' he left. the second guy didn't take so long. three months of dealing with him and i hit the roof. he moved out in the middle of the night. luckily, i'm a pretty intimidating biker type and that was years ago. now-a-days, a shrewd crooked renter probably would have had me up on charges for making him feel threatened.

then again, plenty of people rent successfully. but, it's a risk you have to take into consideration.