Do you like money – I like money…
I thought it was a pretty simple proposition, rent the house, get some extra “escape” spending money, have someone else be responsible for heat, hydro, landscaping and clearing the snow. With the added bonus of not spending any additional money on having someone check in on the place every two weeks to meet our home insurance requirements. Well, it wasn’t that simple – we got it rented, but it felt like a full time job.
Here is a list of things to consider before renting your home:
1. Organize, purge, organize purge – repeat
I found diapers, soothers, and bottle warmers in the depths of our home, (my youngest daughter is 9…). We had to take 2 trailer-full trips to the dump and we gave away 17 garbage bags of old clothing and one truck full of old sporting equipment.
2. Clean up and clean down and clean all around
Renting is harder than selling because it’s a longer cycle. You can’t move out, show your house and move back in. You have to keep your house tidy and scrubbed until you rent it. With three kids, (including two teenagers), this felt like a Herculean task. We showed our house for 6 weeks – and for 6 weeks our nanny Lina, Tim and I cleaned the house from top to bottom at least once a week for a showing.
3. Insurance
I thought this was going to be a win. We not only have someone checking in on the place, they are living there. I felt this issue was crossed off the list, but, no, we needed to buy more insurance to lease our home (landlords insurance).
4. Contracts, Leases, oh my!
Renting requires reading and signing a lot of legal documents, fyi.
5. Agent fees
Getting an agent who has experience with renting homes is a necessity, we used Susan Bandler (www.susanbandler.com) who possessed just the right mix of relaxed style and get down to business approach. It seems pretty typical that agents take 1 month of rent as their fee. We rented for 10 months, so, it was a considerable amount for the duration of the lease.
6. Visiting, Cars and access to stuff
This seems pretty obvious, until you have to deal with it. We had to store both our cars somewhere that was not our driveway. Moving one car was simple, but getting to the airport and storing our 2nd car proved to be trickier. We ended up using the uship.com service, and found Mike Lawson of Impact Logistics, who was a pleasure to deal with, and shipped our SUV from my in-laws to our home up north.
France Escape 