A tired landlord is, quite simply, a person who’s grown tired of being a landlord. While owning a rental property can be an excellent source of passive income, it also comes with many challenges. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the responsibilities and disadvantages of owning a rental property.
Once someone becomes a tired landlord, they may decide to get rid of their property and seek other ways to supplement their income. Of course, selling a rental property comes with additional challenges, such as finding a buyer or communicating the changes with the current tenants.
Could you be a tired landlord? Keep reading to find out and learn the best ways to get rid of your property.
7 Reasons for Becoming a Tired Landlord
While owning a rental property offers many benefits, it also gives the owner plenty of reasons to grow tired of being a landlord and sell their rental property. We’ve collected seven of the most common ones here.
1. Complex Landlord-Tenant Laws
As a landlord, you have to stay informed and updated on federal and state landlord-tenant laws to ensure you’re fully compliant. If you break one of these laws, your tenants can sue you for violating their rights, whether or not you were aware the law existed.
While staying informed on federal and state laws or policies protects you from expensive fines and lawsuits, it takes considerable time and effort. The time commitment to stay an informed and effective landlord can be too much for some people.
Familiarizing yourself and keeping up-to-date with the laws can take time from your schedule. That means less time to devote to other parts of the job like property maintenance or managing expenses.
You might be wearing yourself out trying to keep up with regulations, ensuring you’re protecting your investment and your tenants’ rights.
2. Challenging Tenants
In an ideal world, everyone who rents your property would be a perfect tenant. They would always pay their rent on time, maintain the property and inform you if there were any changes to their current situation.
Unfortunately, every landlord has had to deal with tenants whose rent is always late or missing, who are always getting noise complaints or violating parts of their lease.
It’s possible to evict a tenant if they violate their lease agreement by not paying their rent. However, depending on your state laws, this may require filing an eviction and taking the tenant to court.
The legal system can work slowly and it may take months to remove the tenant from your property. While you’re battling it out in the courts, paying for lawyers and committing time to due process, you’re losing out on income from renting out your property.
Tenants who pay their rent on time can still be a challenge. They might be noisy in the middle of the night, leading to constant noise complaints from other tenants. They might be making a mess or damaging the property, requiring repairs and cleanup.
Unruly tenants can burden even the most patient of landlords, especially when they become a regular part of the job.
3. Maintenance Requirements
You’re responsible for maintenance and upkeep when you own a rental property. Those requirements become steeper as your property ages and may require costly renovations. You may have a plumbing issue requiring immediate care, flooding from a natural disaster or changes to the property to keep it up to code.
These costs can turn your investment from a source of passive income into an expense. If your expenses exceed your profits, owning a rental property can quickly turn into a burden.
4. Financial Instability
Many people invest in rental properties hoping to establish a steady cash flow and passive income each month. However, this is rarely the case. Most months bring unexpected costs, whether from emergency maintenance or a tenant who doesn’t pay rent.
These unexpected costs can make it challenging to determine how much profit you’ll be making each month. In some cases, you might be spending more than you’re making in a month. Financial instability can make landlords want to give up their property and seek alternatives to supplement their income.
Rather than deal with the flux, you might choose to sell your property and seek an investment with fewer overhead costs.
5. Excessive Time Commitment
Becoming a landlord requires an extensive time commitment that many don’t expect when they first invest. Owning a rental property may initially seem like easy money or a good option for retirement. However, a landlord’s commitments are considerable and often don’t happen on your time.
If a tenant has an emergency in the middle of the night, unless you have a property manager, it’s your responsibility to handle the problem. Filling vacancies also requires significant time. Along with advertising the vacancy, you’ll need to screen prospective tenants to prevent problems in the future.
If you invested in your rental property in hopes of gaining a passive income, the time commitment might be more than you’re willing to handle.
6. Living Away From the Property
Remote landlords live off of or far away from their property. While being a remote landlord provides some benefits, it also creates challenges that may be more trouble than they’re worth.
For example, if a tenant can’t unlock their door in the middle of the night, it’s your responsibility to solve the problem when they call you. While opening their door would be a simple task if you lived on-site, living away from your property creates additional challenges to overcome.
Being a remote landlord also means you won’t be able to check on your property as often as you might like. Traveling to your property means accounting for the travel costs, which can eat away at your profit margins.
If you’re not close to your rental property, remotely conducting business can be a hassle that makes you want to retire from real estate investment after just a few years.
7. Property Management Expenses
While property management companies can help you manage many of the challenges above, hiring one of these companies can cut your profit. If you’re already struggling with financial stability, hiring a property manager can impact your cash flow more than you’re willing to accept.
Hiring a property management company also means taking the time to vet their qualifications and experience before hiring them. An unreliable company might not screen tenants the way you would, leaving your property vulnerable to damages or missed rent payments. They might also conduct business in ways you disapprove of.
You may not have the time to manage the property independently. However, an unreliable property management company can make you want to sell the rental property rather than deal with the hassle.
Options for Tired Landlords
Whatever your reason for wanting to get rid of your rental property, you have a few different options.
Sell on the Market Using a Real Estate Agent
Some landlords choose to use a real estate agent to sell their property rather than trying to find a buyer on their own. However, it’s crucial to know some of the disadvantages of choosing a real estate agent to sell your property:
- Landlord-tenant law compliance: You may choose a realtor unfamiliar or inexperienced with landlord-tenant laws. If the realtor breaks one of these laws, even accidentally, the existing tenants can take legal action. That action can lead to the additional costs you’re trying to avoid.
- Repairs and renovations: Selling on the market means you’ll need to make repairs or renovations to sustain buyers’ interest. Depending on the state of your property, these repairs and renovations can be extensive and may cut into the profit you’d make from selling the property.
- Tenant rights: When you’re selling on the market, buyers will likely want showings to get a good idea of what they’re investing in. However, depending on your state laws and rental agreement, tenants may be able to refuse showings. Tenants may also not want to have to move, creating unnecessary conflict.
Sell to a Professional Home Buyer
If you choose to sell your property to a professional home buyer, you can prevent unnecessary conflict, showings, repairs and renovations. Professional home buyers make the process quick and straightforward, which is beneficial for landlords tired of the job.
With a professional home buyer, you won’t have to put any effort into making repairs or renovating the property, as the buyer will handle that once you’ve sold the property. Other responsibilities professional home buyers take on include:
- Paperwork
- Showings
- Evictions
- Tenant conflict
Choosing a professional home buyer is less stressful than using a realtor and smooths the transition between owners. If you’re tired of being a landlord, choosing a professional home buyer is likely your best option.
Invest in Other Opportunities
Many people invest in rental properties in hopes that they can generate a passive, stable income. However, they often find that there’s more work to being a landlord than they anticipated and decide to sell.
Once you’ve sold your property, you’ll have funds to invest in other opportunities to generate a passive income. For example, you can use the money from your sale to invest in dividend stocks or index funds.
Before investing in anything, it’s essential to conduct thorough research to make the best choice. If you’re looking for a passive income, use the money you’ve gained from selling your rental property to invest in a new opportunity or lucrative business venture that you believe in.
How to Sell Your Rental Property Using a Professional Home Buyer
Choosing a professional home buyer is often the best choice for tired landlords. It lets them get out from underneath the property quickly and make some money in the process. When you work with a professional home buyer, you’ll follow a few simple steps:
- Schedule a walk-through: Schedule an in-home walk-through with a professional home buyer, so they can assess your property and discuss the buying process with you. This walk-through should take about 30 minutes, though times may vary depending on the size of your property.
- Get an offer: Once the analysis is complete, you’ll receive a firm cash offer. This offer won’t change throughout the process, regardless of future appraisals or inspections. You’ll know how much your property will sell for at the outset, so you don’t have to gamble on waiting for a better offer.
- Close the deal and move: The buyer will pay you in cash once you agree to the offer, so you won’t have to worry about financing the purchase. An agent will work with you to explain everything about the process and help you make the necessary preparations.
With a professional home buyer, everything can happen on your schedule, including when to close the deal and when you’ll move. A leaseback program will even let you stay at your property for a while once the sale closes.
You don’t have to worry about informing your tenants — the home buying company will handle all of your responsibility. Once you make the sale, you’re free from the property and all of the responsibility that comes with it.
Benefits of Using HomeGo to Sell Your Rental Property
HomeGo is a professional home buyer that can help tired landlords sell their rental property and find freedom from their responsibilities. The benefits of working with us include:
- No limitations: We don’t limit the types of homes we buy. Whether your property is in mint condition or has significant structural damage, we’ll buy your house as-is and factor the repair costs into our offer.
- No inspections: When you sell your home through a realtor, the required home inspection could reveal that you need costly repairs. At HomeGo, we don’t conduct an inspection before buying your property. We’ll give you an offer and handle any repairs ourselves regardless of the condition.
- Experienced help: Owning a property comes with many challenges. We have experienced agents with a wealth of knowledge to help you through any situation. Since we pay in cash, we can solve problems quickly and allow you to exit the rental property business as soon as possible.
Choose HomeGo as Your Trusted Professional Home Buyer
If you’re a tired landlord, you may be ready to get out of the rental business. However, owning a rental property means finding a way to sell it before you can move on to something new. HomeGo is here to help make the home buying process as fast and straightforward as possible.
With us, you don’t have to worry about back and forth negotiations, listing your property or handling endless showings.
As soon as we assess your property, we’ll give you a cash offer on the same day. You’ll be able to close the deal in just seven days and you can choose to stay at your property if you need a little time to move.
Schedule an appointment with us today to get started.
