A Comprehensive Guide On How To Be a Landlord For Stay-at-Home Mom

Owning a property that you rent out to tenants is a great way to make some significant passive income. If we take the United Kingdom as an example, a couple of years ago, UK tenants shelled out about 50 billion sterling pounds towards rent. A breakdown showed that the millennial generation, born between 1977 and 1995, paid the most in rental costs, and at the time the UK estimated that there were around 2 million landlords.

This makes renting out a residence a lucrative business, but one that needs to be approached in the right way. If you’re thinking of becoming a landlord, you’ve probably been warned, in sweeping generalizations, that you’ll be going around in circles to fetch your rent, or tenants won’t pay rent to begin with and they’ll only drive you nuts. The same way tenants can get a bad rap, and will have the assumption that landlords are greedy, exploit the poor, and will test your faith in humanity. 

Clearly, not a match made in heaven. Since not every tenant and not every landlord are the same, we’ve decided to talk a bit about being a landlord for a very specific niche; the stay-at-home mom. It’s a good way to make extra cash, while still being able to take care of your kids. Here are some pointers on how to go about it while being able to balance out being both a tenant and full-time mom.  

Create a Policy: Being the landlord doesn’t mean you have the upper-hand; you need the tenant as much as they need you. You can’t just come up with new terms and conditions along the way. Have a policy printed out for tenants, so that they have something to refer to before any final agreement is signed. That way, everyone will know what is expected of them and what is due to them. The same way you have ground rules set out for your children,

Rent Collection: There’s always going to be a better and more efficient way than knocking on doors to collect the rent. It’s tedious and time consuming for you, and it’s certainly not practical to go around with children for this task. It’s much wiser to use a bank where the rent will be deposited straight into your account based on an agreed upon date of transfer with your tenants. 

It’s also important to keep track of your tenant’s payment history and have a system in place for late payments or potential eviction. A good rent reporting plan can also benefit you and your tenants, as it builds their credit history while ensuring timely payments for you. Further, consider setting up a deposit system for any potential damages to the property. This can help avoid conflicts and protect both your property and your tenants’ security deposit.

Carrying Out Inspections: The main reason for a landlord’s property inspection is to evaluate the overall condition of the property. It gives you the right to assure that everything is in good working order and reasonable state. This concerns both the interior and exterior.

Apart from your property, you could also look into the people you’re renting to. Hiring tenant screening services can help you make detailed assessments of your potential tenants and help you avoid any costly mistakes. These screenings can include background checks, credit history, and references from previous landlords. This way, you can ensure that you are renting to responsible and reliable individuals.

Having said so, a property inspection guide will give you advice on how often an inspection is needed, the appropriate times of the day to do it, and giving advance notice before entering the property. 

Don’t be surprised if you see the place un-kept. Yet, this is your property and you want to keep it as clean as possible, so you could suggest a cleaning company near the residence. Tenants may very well be interested to hire professional help to clean the house.

Set Work Hours: Unless you enjoy attending to clogged toilets at midnight, you need to set aside some hours of the day when you can attend to the problems of the property. Otherwise, you can find tenants calling you at all times of the day or night with requests and/or complaints while you are with your children at home and having to take care of their activities, daily routines, and bedtimes. Treat renting as a business, which it is. You can have urgent calls forwarded to your voicemail. If the call doesn’t forward, then it mustn’t have been that urgent to begin with. Basically, humans need structure and rules to govern themselves, so learn to separate your private time from your working time because if you can’t do that, no one is going to do it for you. That is not to say that an emergency is to be ignored. Maybe your tenant needs urgent attention and has no one else to help them. That’s why at least your voicemail should be available throughout all hours of the day.

You might not get the perfect tenant, but you can make compromises. Maybe the appearance of their house is messy, but that can be solved with professional help. Maybe the tenant is behind on payments, but they’re always polite and eventually pay every month. For a stay-at-home mom, it could be a great way to add more money to the household, while still being there for you for your kids. And you’ll still have plenty of time to take care of your tenants.