How to Turn Your Home into a Rental

There are many reasons you may want to turn the home you live in into a rental. You bought it when the interest rates were *so* low and you want to hold on to that beautiful 3% interest rate after you move. You’ve owned it for years and are excited to have a rental that cash-flows. Your work is taking you away for a period of time.

Whatever the case, turning your home into a rental is an exciting time! And with that excitement can come a lot of unknowns. Like, how exactly does this all work?

When you work with Iron Creek, there’s two general options for renting a home you own and are moving out of.

Option 1: Wait until you move out to start the rental process.

 If you think moving is stressful enough and don’t want to have to juggle anything else, this path is for you. You’ll sign a management agreement allowing us to soft-schedule vendors and get things lined up for when you move out. Other than that, we won’t be bombarding you with requests or adding more to your to-do list.

 Once you move out, we’ll complete the takeover walkthrough, which creates the roadmap of what needs to be complete to get your home rent-ready. From there we’ll schedule out all the needed vendors, check their work, and process payments. Once it’s ready to go live, we have our professional photographer take photos and get your rental listed. This usually takes 1-2 weeks depending on the condition of the home, time of year, and how much advanced notice we have.

 The upside to this approach is you don’t have added stress while you’re boxing up and moving out.

 The downside is your home is not going on the market until it’s vacant, so it will have a longer time period before you’re receiving rent income from your home.

 Sample timeframe (this expands and contracts based on the condition of your home when it’s handed over to us, time of the year, and how it’s priced).

Option 2: Start the rental process while you’re still living there

This option is available on a case-by-case basis after we’ve seen your home.

Option 2 starts the clock while you’re still living in your home.  In this instance, you’ll sign the management agreement just like step 1. However, instead of a holding pattern we’ll begin moving forward listing your home for rent.

We’ll have the photographer take photos while you’re living there. You will have to tidy things up, put away personal items, and get it ‘showing ready’. Once we have the photos, we put it on the market with an “available” date about a week after your scheduled move out date.

We then coordinate with you on showing requests. Usually this is 1-2 times per week when we book out an hour in advance with you. Multiple showings will be scheduled in that hour timeframe, depending on how many requests we receive. We then process applications and sign a lease for a start date about a week after you move out. We also coordinate with our vendors to schedule them when it’s vacant.

The business day after you move out, we’ll complete a walkthrough and have our vendor partners get the home ready for its new renters.

The benefit to this approach is it minimizes the time you’re paying for 2 mortgages without rent income.

The downside is you may have to get your home in showing condition multiple times while you’re boxing things up. You also have to be very responsive with vendor approvals after moving out due to the contracted timeline.

Like anything, there’s pros and cons for each option. If you choose to wait until you move out to begin the process, you’ll minimize interruptions to what is already a busy moving time. On the other side of the coin, you’ll likely go longer without rent income. If you choose option 2 you’ll likely minimize the time your home is vacant, but you’ll have to put some extra effort into having your home ‘show ready’. Whichever path you choose, our goal is to make the process as quick and seamless as possible for you by taking care of all the maintenance and cleaning coordination, showings, leasing and management.

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