Renting our home while snowbirding--any advice?

[rljdself]

We are preparing for our first winter in AZ. We will be renting home fully furnished for 6 to 9 months. (We can park at our daughters before heading south and when we come home. Has anyone rented their home furnished? What did you store? Pictures left on walls? Knick Knacks left on shelves? Working hard preparing and purging lots of stuff. Any advice welcome.

[MtnTrek]

Welcome to the forum.
You'll really like Snow birding!
Naturally this can be either a good experience or well, a lot depends on the integrity of your renters. Do your due diligence. One point we've observed from friends approaching this avenue of investment is utilities. You might want to be sure the deposit is ample if the utilities are staying assigned to you. A couple we know, the renters energy use was 2-3 times what theirs ever was. Both parties were in shock that it was even possible to use that much electricity and LPG. Granted it was a harsh winter, but. There is a lot more to consider than someone simply paying your mortgage payment while you're away enjoying yourself. We've heard other accounts of letting family members "rent", should be a breeze, what could go wrong? On the other hand there are ideal renters.
Be well.

[bsirby]

We rented our home completely empty and the renters paid utilities. Since the market to sell was off, we had our realtor handle renting it. He screened them, ran a credit check and determined the amount of deposit. We did this for several years until we were able to sell.
However, I would have to question who would rent for just 6-9 months. I also would not want to take the chance of renters ruining my furniture or sleeping in my bed. It also would be very inconvenient to move your possessions out, then having to move them back in again. We have found living in our motorhome for the last 6 years to work very well for us. We also stay in our daughters back yard when visiting, so we really didn't need the house or the headaches of being a homeowner. Hope you can find a good solution.

[MSHappyCampers]

We are trying to get some medical issues behind us to try a year of fulltiming.

We will be leasing our home, fully furnished, right down to the dishes. We will remove personal items, such as pictures, and store them. The renters will not be allowed to mount anything on the walls that require making holes! We have a storage building with riding lawn tractor, weedeater, pressure washer, etc. They will be allowed to use these to maintain the property, but only after signing an agreement to repair anything that breaks during their use.

Our son lives here and will be in charge of watching over the property. He will come by once a month and do a walk-through, just to be sure they are taking care of it properly. He will have a list of companies to call for any problems such as electrical, plumbing, etc, and they will call him when needed.

We are lucky to live in a town with an Air Force Base. I have a realtor friend that thinks he can find a nice Air Force family, NOT individual Airmen, that will really take good care of it. I will pay him an initial fee to do the rental, then we will be responsible after that!

[Old-Biscuit]

DON'T


But if you are going to do it:
Management Company......handle the advertisement, the screening, the credit checks, the deposits, the money collection, the phone calls, the headaches, the eviction notices, the evictions and the leasing agreements----6 mos

But as noted above ...who is going to want to lease for short periods

[Joe11]

Tough call. That's your home. To them it's a rental. The only way I'd rent out a house again is if I bought it to rent it out.

Best of luck.